The Humble semi colon
The Humble semicolon
I am looking for feed back on a really important issue. It is when to use a Colon.
I first of all looked at Wikipedia just to see what they had to say;
The semicolon or semicolon is a punctuation mark that separates major sentence elements. A semicolon can be used between two closely related independent clauses, provided they are not already joined by a coordinating conjunction. Wikipedia
An example
I was reviewing a website written by an engineer and noted that in a list of items each was followed by a Semi Colon.
1) When to use a Colon;
2) When to use a Semi Colon;
3) Is this really important anyway;
I would not write this way and thought it all wrong so I quizzed my daughter who majors in English and works with an engineering company. Her response was that Engineers
master in math not English, which was kinda funny.
I guess theoretically they are correct but I wonder if this is universal. I think it all wrong
but who am I to judge such learned people that build things.
Your comments would be appreciated.
Peter H
Recent Comments
11
Semicolons are very necessary in writing some types of machine code, but in the English language it is not used so freely; in fact, most people would separate the sentences with a full stop rather than use the semicolon incorrectly.
Derek
It seems to me that semicolons are used less and less today. I rarely find the need to use one. Jim
Peter,
I have installed Grammarly so that it corrects all the errors
when I am writing posts or pages they are not 100% so
just letting you know but have found they do very well for
me :)
Thanks, and yes I use and promote Grammarly but the free version does not pick this up. I have not used the paid Version.
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I am of the same view as Marley using Grammarly. Blessings
Blessings Scarlett