In defence of the semi-colon

Why do some writers dislike a punctuation mark with such passion? To put it aside is to limit by choice the ways in which you can express yourself, which makes no sense

It may just be a manifestation of a pedantic and pernickety nature, but I have always taken a lot of care over punctuation. I’m aware how that makes me sound, and it’s not inaccurate, but we are where we are: if you love language, words and the craft of assembling them, it would make no sense not to pay careful attention to the framework which keeps them apart. Punctuation can, after all, make a huge difference to meaning, as in the title of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves, wherein she tells the story of a description of a panda which is made nonsensical by an unnecessary comma. Equally such a punctuation mark would transform the famous first line of Moby-Dick from the brooding, mysterious “Call me Ishmael” to the frankly flirtatious “Call me, Ishmael”.

This is, in its own way, an utterly preposterous thing to think, let alone write, but I am aware that the semi-colon is not universally popular. There is even a whole book dedicated to it, by historian and philosopher of science Dr Cecelia Watson, who describes it as “misunderstood”. Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell and Stephen King hated them, while Kurt Vonnegut called them “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing”. Abraham Lincoln called the semi-colon “a very useful little chap”. I was once instructed by a select committee chairman who will remain nameless to remove every semi-colon from a draft report, which I grudgingly did; I do not think it improved the text. But all of this was put in my mind reading a recent Substack article by the mercurial Ian Dunt, in which he reproduced a piece he had written 10 years ago and said of it, “Looking at it now, I can see that there are semi colons in it, so I was clearly still half-formed as a writer”.

I think this attitude, while widespread, is mistaken and preposterous, for two reasons. The first is a simple one: choice. The semi-colon is not so very old, as punctuation marks go, appearing at the very end of the 15th century in De Ætna ad Angelum Chabrielem Liber by the Venetian scholar and cardinal Pietro Bembo. The book was printed by Aldo Manuzio, who thought readers might appreciate a halfway house between the skip of a comma and the more deliberate pause of a colon, so created a hybrid mark. It has, therefore, been part of our armoury for more than 500 years, which I think counts as “well established”.

If you are a writer, if writing excites you, if the act of construction of phrases, sentences and paragraphs is a process which gives you joy, then you must, surely, love the breadth of the English language. Some estimates suggest that the average English speaker knows 40,000 words, though may only use half of them on a regular basis, but the language as a whole may have more than a million words, with neologisms appearing all the time. This is probably by some distance richer and more varied than any other Western language, and the ubiquity of English exposes it to so many influences that it is no wonder it should be so diverse. We regularly use words with their roots in Latin, Greek, Old English, Norse, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and Arabic (and even sometimes Urdu and Gaelic and Irish and Welsh and Afrikaans and Yiddish and Persian and…).

But writing is not merely a matter of vocabulary, of content, but of the framework into which we fit them. We create that framework in part through punctuation, yet most estimates agree we have only 14 punctuation marks. If that is so, or even approximately so, why on earth would a writer choose to exclude one of those marks as a matter of taste? Surely it is much better to use the whole typographical armoury available to have the greatest number of possible options for expression yourself? Deciding the semi-colon is infra dig seems to be a perfect example of cutting off your nose to spite your face, or like throwing away a golf club from your collection (also of 14, like punctuation marks, as it happens) because you decide you dislike its shape. It makes no sense to me.

The second reason is more substantial but straightforward, and it is that the semi-colon is not just a garnish to be sprinkled over your sentences, but a punctuation mark which performs a number of very specific roles. One can try to define with legalistic precision the rules which should govern its use, but I think it’s most easily expressed and understood, as Manuzio’s grandson and namesake was to do, as part of a hierarchy of pauses or divisions. In Orthographiae ratio (1561), he described the different steps represented by the comma, the semi-colon, the colon and the full stop. Eighty years later, Ben Jonson, in his The English Grammar (1640), called the semi-colon “somewhat a longer breath” than the comma, and, like Manuzio, saw it as an aid to understanding for the reader.

This must surely be right. The semi-colon indicates a length of intellectual pause and a degree of connection between phrases that is different from the comma, the colon and the full stop. There is a difference in meaning, albeit a subtle one, among the following sentences:

• We finished the game, [and] it was time to go home.

• We finished the game; it was time to go home.

• We finished the game: it was time to go home.

• We finished the game. It was time to go home.

I make no claims to be the most painstaking wordsmith ever to draw breath, but I am conscious sometimes of deciding which of the four punctuation marks to use, what each version would mean and what effect it would have on the flow of the sentences. So when I use a semi-colon, I do so for a reason, having, however briefly and subconsciously, calculated the role it is playing. It is not a matter of whim or random selection.

Perhaps the beat which the semi-colon represents is not a degree of separation you find useful. That is a choice. But if you have any more significant reason beyond caprice to dislike semi-colons to the point of refusing to use them, or, more extreme still, believing that others should not, I am at a loss. You are choosing to have fewer ways of expressing yourself rather than more, less nuance, less light and shade. As a writer, that makes no sense to me at all.