https://archive.ph/0QYGh

Because anti-semicolon ideology is anti-poetic.

As a rule of thumb, when the pause between two adjacent sentences implied by the period seems a bit too halting, try a semicolon.

I find it easier to think about the utility of semicolons from the perspective of individual sentences to be combined. And therefore, if a properly used semicolon were to be replaced with a period, the two resulting sentences should still make sense in isolation, they'd just feel ever so slightly too far apart.

"Semicolons bring the drama. That's why I love them." Does it work? Yes. Is there a clear through-line from one sentence to the next? Yes. Does the pause between the sentences feel a bit too abrupt, though? Maybe!

("Establish clear through-line" can be another nice reason to combine sentences with a semicolon.)

This reminds me of a "debate" I had with RMS. Back in '98 I was involved with the Gnu Documentation Project, which was about improving the often very out-of-date Gnu documentation.

RMS tends to use semi-colons where others use commas, with _MANY_ subordinate clauses. I suggested he use shorter sentences, and commas. His response:

"But I like semicolons"

That's when I realised that regardless of his bizarre brilliance, there was no way to discuss some issues with him. I still respect him, but he's a shocking writer.

Related: Marked decline in semicolons in English books, study suggests (10 points, 6 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44056344

Unrelated: The origin and virtues of semicolons in programming languages (46 points, 2024, 19 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40038712

The title misuses a semicolon and should use a colon to join two somewhat-related ideas where there is a directional causality.

> Prescriptive grammar brings the drama: that's why I love it

Delightfully meta at times, a fun read! I recently binged all of Jane Austen’s novels, and her dense prose is so chock full of clauses and sub clauses, that I like feel she uses semicolons and emdashes the same way programmers might nest with braces.

I love dramatically separating the sardonic Wayne's World postfix not from the sentence... Not!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._Not!

https://youtu.be/MCapEm8Nu7c?t=104

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the insincere disclaimer but prefix, but people always use it to falsely claim they're not racist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_not_racist,_but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43gm3CJePn0

As an aside, I’ve noticed that ChatGPT uses em dashes (“—”) quite frequently — much more often than I’m used to seeing on the web. It’s a bit surprising, considering it's largely trained on web-based data.

These semicolons are my light inside the dark

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M94ii6MVilw

During high school the consensus from our English teachers was “we know these things are hard to use properly. We’ll teach you how to do it, but it is usually better just to rewrite what you are trying to say using two sentences and avoid them.”

That being said, we were also advised to “use at most one semicolon in the writing section of the SAT. Proper usage will help your score. But, you better make sure you’ve used it correctly.”

Arguments against: 1. Most people don't use them correctly. 2. How long a pause should "feel" is lost nuance. Non-native English speakers and people without academic degrees can't feel the difference between semi-colons and periods so why bother? 3. A small set of orthogonal letters and symbols is better for writing than sets with redundancies. 4. Long sentences suck.

I strongly recommend reading the book 'Semicolon' by Cecelia Watson. My review of the book: https://bookwyrm.social/user/pivic/review/3310502/s/review-o...

The semicolon followed by that very, very important word called "however" are often cruicial in abstracts of scientific papers: turn.sh finds you where the authors of a paper switch to critizizing:

  #!/bin/sh
  grep -C2 -n -i -E "[.;.][\n\t\ ]however" # scan where the paper takes a critical turn

I love the English language; it feels like a declining art -- drowned out by memes, typos, and algorithm-approved brevity. I use semicolons in my personal journal all the time. Probably incorrectly, but who cares?

I try to sneak them in occasionally; even when they're not appropriate.

Some comments here reminded me of this, https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM?si=pjratCwL75XR3iUt

I thank my Mom for trying to instill enough Grammatical knowledge where I use the semicolon from time to time.

I assumed this would be about JavaScript and struggled to process the actual article for a good 10s. :)

writing is all about prescriptive grammar. The written language has no native speakers about whom to form and validate hypotheses.

"precriptive" even has "script" in it; i.e. writing was itself was invented for codifying rules, so course it imposes rules upon itself first.

It annoys me to see so many marketing slogans and material using commas terribly.

Solution: Learn C.

But I have been to college.

This also applies to Javascript.

All! Punctuation! Brings! Drama! :P

this whole piece is a massive punctuation-of-all-stripes flex, and i’m here for it

Maybe it’s selection bias, but it’s amazing how the comments section for this post has so much more punctuation than a typical HN post; fascinating

Shortest sentence with a semicolon:

tl;dr