Semicolon (;)

How to read it

The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as the mark that connects independent clauses and shows a closer relationship between them than a period does, and the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as a break “longer than a comma but shorter than a full stop”, mostly used in formal writing. The US Government Publishing Office’s Style Manual gives examples of both jobs: “It is true in peace; it is true in war” for statements too closely related to be separate sentences, and a list of directors whose names and titles already contain commas. CMOS Shop Talk’s list example is “We visited Duluth, Minnesota; Abilene, Texas; and Detroit, Michigan.” Unicode encodes it as U+003B SEMICOLON and notes that the same shape is the Greek question mark: the separate Greek character U+037E looks identical, and Unicode prefers U+003B for it. A semicolon worn as a tattoo has a meaning of its own, on oldsymbols.com: the semicolon tattoo.

Also searched as: ;, semicolon meaning, semicolon punctuation, semicolon symbol, semicolon vs colon, what is ; called.

Semicolon or colon?

A semicolon joins two statements of equal weight; a Colon (:) introduces what follows it. The Guardian’s style guide calls the semicolon, used correctly, “a very elegant compromise between a full stop (too much) and a comma (not enough)”, with the example “Some reporters were brilliant; others were less so.” It also complains that writers treat the two marks as interchangeable.

What writers and style guides say

The Guardian’s style guide collects writers’ views: Beryl Bainbridge said “I use it all the time”; George Bernard Shaw told T. E. Lawrence that not using semicolons was “a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life”; George Orwell thought them unnecessary; and Kurt Vonnegut advised, “Do not use semicolons. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” Two British guides discourage it. GOV.UK’s style guide says, “Do not use semicolons as they are often mis-read,” and Cambridge Dictionary’s grammar says they are “not commonly used in contemporary English”. CMOS Shop Talk counted them in twelve recent New Yorker stories: half used two or fewer and three used none, while stories by Tessa Hadley and Roddy Doyle used them about three times a page.

Look-alikes

The Greek question mark ; (U+037E) is identical in shape, and Unicode prefers the ordinary semicolon for it. The Arabic semicolon ؛ (U+061B) is turned. Unicode also has a reversed semicolon ⁏ (U+204F) and a turned semicolon ⸵ (U+2E35). Unicode notes that the one dot leader ․ (U+2024) is also used as the Armenian semicolon, the mijaket.