Semicolons: should we use them or not?

Question

I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply as an excuse to quote the following startling analysis, with which Kurt Vonnegut recently regaled an audience of students:

"I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how to become a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
I've never heard semicolons described this way; but then then nor did my college mention them (or teach me anything at all, if it comes to that). In the last couple of years I've progressed - at least, I hope it is progress - from not using semicolons at all to using them when required, in the same way that I now apply pepper to my potatoes; so I'm decidedly in the pro semicolon camp, which I am alarmed all of a sudden to find might be a hermaphrodite camp. Which would be just my luck.
Fay Weldon, laureate of the Savoy Hotel, said recently that although she doesn't hate easily, she feels that way about semicolons; on the other hand George Bernard Shaw once said that not using semicolons is a sign of mental defectiveness. Orwell used no semicolons in "Comig up for Air"; Julian Barnes uses so many that reading his prose is like walking through British public buildings, which these days are fitted with double fire-doors every five paces (yes there are fewer people burnt alive now but the rate of kneecappings has shot up).

I doubt there's a right or wrong answer to the question whether prose can achieve the same effects without semicolons as with, but I'd be interested to read your opinions and examples, if only because I'm a nerd on the subject.
Peasemarch.

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ap filted:
[nq:1]I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply as an excuse to quote the following startling analysis, with ... I am alarmed all of a sudden to find might be a hermaphrodite camp. Which would be just my luck.[/nq]
Some time ago I posted a link here to an audio clip of Mr Vonnegut on the radio show "Whad'ya Know" where he again held forth on the subject of semicolons...attributing the point to Mike Royko, he said that experts building a profile of the Unabomber knew from his letters that he was both mentally ill and college-educated, because he used semicolons and used them correctly..

Another clip I saved from that show has the host asking Vonnegut if people often approach him to say that something he wrote changed their lives...Vonnegut's response was that, no, these days they come up to ask him if he's wearing sunscreen..r

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[nq:1]I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply as an excuse to quote the following startling analysis, with ... nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons.[/nq]
That does it. I can't assume that anyone has died. They keep popping up alive after I have consigned them to the grave. I was so surprised when you said KV "recently regaled" that I had to look up some biographies (on Google). If he is still alive, he has only just completed his 81st year.

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Thus spake Pat Durkin:

(On Vonnegut's aversion to semi-colons)
[nq:1]If he is still alive, he has only just completed his 81st year.[/nq]
His age would explain his railing against things he doesn't understand. (Hi, Sparky Woody Bob!)

Simon R. Hughes

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[nq:1]luck. I doubt there's a right or wrong answer to the question whether prose can achieve the same effects without semicolons as with, but I'd be interested to read your opinions and examples, if only because I'm a nerd on the subject.[/nq]
Use them by all means, but once they're gone, they're gone. The Great Semicolon Rush of the 19th Century all but exhausted the European supplies, and now every one has to be imported from the USA at great expense. And no new semicolon mines have been discovered since 1923.
John Dean
Oxford
De-frag to reply

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[nq:1]I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply as an excuse to quote the following startling analysis, with ... not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."[/nq]
Semicolons do have a rather pretentious air about them, don't they. I can well imagine that for that reason alone there's a case to be made against them.
Still, I use them myself. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine writing a sentence of more than elementary complexity without finding myself compelled to promote the occasional comma to a semicolon, if not use a semicolon outright, in order visually to indicate a degree of association intermediate between that indicated by a comma and that indicated by a full-stop; don't you?
They can also be handy in enumerating comma-containing items.

Gerald Smyth

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On 11/13/03 2:14 PM, in article
[nq:1]I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply as an excuse to quote the following startling analysis, with ... but I'd be interested to read your opinions and examples, if only because I'm a nerd on the subject. Peasemarch.[/nq]
I am forced to use them, because Gene Construction Kit won't take full colons in file names. So I can't name promoter- fusion constructs with the proper double colon. I don't like it, but hey.

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[nq:1]I doubt there's a right or wrong answer to the question whether prose can achieve the same effects without semicolons as with, but I'd be interested to read your opinions and examples, if only because I'm a nerd on the subject.[/nq]
From Never Trust a Calm Dog :
"When in doubt, use the semicolon; the average reader won't understand its use and will give you credit for erudition."
Denis Smith, high school counselor

Ray Heindl
(remove the Xs to reply)

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[nq:1]I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply as an excuse to quote the following startling analysis, with ... not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."...[/nq]
"No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly."

Richard Hugo, thanks to

But he was giving advice to young poets, and anyway, even if he was a better poet than I am, he's wrong.

Jerry Friedman

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I agree that he's wrong - to use aggressive language like "idiots" about such a gentle issue as semicolons. Does he not know that a semicolon can link to sentences that are not self-evidently so? Look at the difference between the following alternatives, for example:
Jack didn't really mind being left without a car. He had the house to himself.

Jack didn't really mind being left without a car; he had the house to himself.

Such links are obviously even more useful when the sentences involved are buried in larger wads of prose rather than given in isolation like that.

That's the crux of it for me. I like semicolons for their power to make different sentences in a paragraph lean towards each other, and therefore, in effect, away from others. Take this example from Muriel Spark:

The school where Sybil taught was shortly to break up for the holidays; Ariadne was to visit her husband in Cairo at that time. Sybil promised a visit to the Westons.
That semicolon might not be strictly necessary, but without it the three sentences might sound disconnected from each other and too evenly separated, and a certain monotony could result.
Here is an example from Tobias Wolff:
April could see the glitter of windshields in the distance. There was a bench at the bus stop; when she got there she was was going to lie down and and close her eyes and pretend to sleep.
The semicolon connects the last two sentences to make a longer and more complex whole. The last two sentences now "lean away" satifyingly from the first, to my way of reading.
Of course, some people might wish instead to join the two by adding an "and" before the "when". For me that would be rhythmically looser, but it's a matter of taste, obviously. Over a longer stretch of prose the richest approach would probably be to use all three styles: sentences linked by semicolons; sentences linked by conjunctions; and sentences sitting in pools of their own loneliness.

Peasemarch.

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[nq:2]I bring up this admittedly slightly over-warmed-over question again simply ... nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."[/nq]
[nq:1]Semicolons do have a rather pretentious air about them, don't they. I can well imagine that for that reason alone ... writing a sentence of more than elementary complexity without finding myself compelled to promote the occasional comma to a semicolon,[/nq]
This is really because what we need is a semi-comma and don't have it.
[nq:1]if not use a semicolon outright, in order visually to indicate a degree of association intermediate between that indicated by a comma and that indicated by a full-stop; don't you?[/nq]
You're not the Unabomber.

"Throw me that lipstick, darling, I wanna redo my stigmata." +-Jennifer Saunders, "Absolutely Fabulous"

Semicolons: should we use them or not?

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