What is the semi colon for?

Question

Historians then came to believe that their task
was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a
problem; to explain or illustrate the successive
phases of national growth, prosperity, and
adversity.

...

To specify what was brought just before, as highlighted here:

"Historians then came to believe that their task
was not so much to paint a picture(1) as to solve a
problem(2); to explain(2) or illustrate(1) the successive
phases of national growth, prosperity, and
adversity."?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

.
The semicolon is in error-- a colon will fix the punctuation, but the sentence needs a rewrite, since it is not clear that the nonfinite clause after the colon represents a 'problem'.

Historians then came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem: to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity.

Ah, I now see your exegesis. I now suggest:

Historians then came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem or to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity.

.

Thomas Tompion · Answer

AnonymousHistorians then came to believe that their task
was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a
problem; to explain or illustrate the successive
phases of national growth, prosperity, and
adversity.

Fowler said that the semi-colon was "a discontinuity of grammatical construction greater than that indicated by a comma but less than that indicated by a full stop". They are often used to indicate the end of a sentence, or a significant part of a sentence, where what follows is quite closely linked to what has just been said. The colon suggests a closer link between what is about to be said, and what has just been said, i.e. to introduce a list or, perhaps, a series of clauses in apposition.

What we have here is a problem, and what follows the semi-colon is a statement of what the problem is. Now Fowler's conditions seem to me to be met here, and one might, in my view, be quite correct to use a semi-colon. Use the colon and you, to my ear, are making a greater break and blowing a few more trumpets about the nature of the problem. It's a matter of which you want to do.

Fowler died in 1933 and a lot of people think that punctuation practice has evolved greatly since then.

[...]

Anonymous · Answer

Mister Micawber.
The semicolon is in error-- a colon will fix the punctuation, but the sentence needs a rewrite, since it is not clear that the nonfinite clause after the colon represents a 'problem'.

Historians then came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem: to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity.

Ah, I now see your exegesis. I now suggest:

Historians then came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem or to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity.

.

Wait, I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Am I right?

Here's the full extract:

2 Historians then came to believe that their task
was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a
problem; to explain or illustrate the successive
phases of national growth, prosperity, and
adversity.

2 The meaning of the topic sentence made
clearer; the new conception of history defined.

Anonymous · Answer

Does "to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity." explain the previous objects or describe the true task of Historians?

Mister Micawber · Answer

.
A semicolon must be preceded and succeeded by an independent clause. Therefore, it is wrong in the sentence. I have offered you two alternatives.
.

What is the semi colon for?

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