When Do You Use A Semicolon?

[MACDRIVE]

Some of you aristocratic higher education people at MacRumors use semicolons. Cue me in please. 🙂

 

[EricNau]

A semicolon separates two independent clauses (any clause that can stand alone by itself as a sentence) with no connecting words.

e.g. "MacRumors is a great place; the people here are very helpful."​

You can also use a semicolon when joining two independent clauses with a conjunctive adverb.

e.g. "I love my school; however, the cafeteria food is terrible."​

 

[MACDRIVE]

WOW, that's really cool! Is the conjunctive adverb 'however'? 🙂

 

[EricNau]

WOW, that's really cool! Is the conjunctive adverb 'however'? 🙂

Yes...

Other conjunctive adverbs include:

• furthermore
• moreover
• incidentally
• accordingly
• otherwise
• therefore

etc. etc.​

 

[EricNau]

One more thing...

A semicolon can be used to seperate a series of three or more items that contain internal commas.

e.g. "Apple has retail stores in Los Angeles, California; Albany, New York; Austin, Texas; and Sacramento, California."​

 

[MACDRIVE]

Awesome! I used to hate english and punctuation in my younger days, but now it is becoming more like a really cool game. 🙂

 

[Dunepilot]

I love the fact that people know that if they need accurate advice, MR is the place to turn to, whatever the topic.

Semicolons are a much-misunderstood but valuable addition to our arsenal of punctuation.

Some of you may be aware of Never Mind the Full Stops, a rather good grammar-based programme that recently debuted on the BBC over here.

 

[Nermal]

Some of you may be aware of Never Mind the Full Stops, a rather good grammar-based programme that recently debuted on the BBC over here.

That "signs" video reminded me of a sign outside a motel here - "STUDIO S AVAILABLE" where you can clearly see where they deleted the apostrophe 😛

 

[Dunepilot]

That "signs" video reminded me of a sign outside a motel here - "STUDIO S AVAILABLE" where you can clearly see where they deleted the apostrophe 😛

At least they had the humility to accept they were in error!