Semicolons

People often get confused by semicolons. They are not sure how to use them so they either avoid them or use them badly.

In reality, though, it isn’t too complicated to learn when to use semicolons. And when you can use them properly, they can make your writing look much more stylish.

A good place to start is to look at this famous example. It was written by Charles Dickens and comes at the very beginning of his novel, “A Tale of Two Cities”:

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

You can see that this sentence has two parts, joined together by a semicolon.

Look more closely and you can see that both parts could stand alone as complete sentences.

“It was the best of times” could be a complete sentence. “It was the worst of times” could also be a complete sentence.

Dickens could have written: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times”. Two sentences instead of one, and perfectly grammatical.

But he wanted to show that they were linked together. That means that he could have used a joining word and written: “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times”. Again this would have been perfectly grammatical.

If he had used a full stop instead of a semicolon, Dickens wouldn’t have shown how closely the two parts were linked. It might have sound as if he was writing about two different things.

If he had used “and” he would have made the link, but it would have been as strong – or as stylish.

I know that it’s difficult to say what is stylish and what isn’t. I might be biased because Dickens is my favourite author, but I think there is no better person to show us what good style looks like.

So, here’s the rule:

We use a semicolon to join together two complete sentences to show that they are very closely connected.

 Here are some examples of semicolons being correctly used:

• I like Stephen; he always makes me laugh.
• Spring is a wonderful time of year; it tells us that winter is over and summer is on the way.
• Casablanca is a great film; it’s one of my all-time favourites.

Always remember:

It must be possible for the parts before and after the semicolon to be complete sentences. If this isn’t the case, we shouldn’t be using a semicolon.

There are a couple of other ways of using semicolons, but this is the main way. We’ll save the others for another post. In the meantime, if you want to test your understanding, you might want to read this post again to see if you can find any examples of where it might have been improved using a semicolon instead of a full stop or a joining word.

^{Posted by Graham https://grahamsgrammar.com/about-me/}

^{With thanks to Martin for the reminder.}