A current research has discovered a 50% decline in the usage of semicolons during the last 20 years. The decline accelerates a longterm development:
In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly each 90 phrases; by 2000, it had fallen to 1 each 205 phrases. At the moment, there’s only one semicolon for each 390 phrases.
Additional analysis reported that 67% of British college students by no means or not often use a semicolon; greater than 50% didn’t know how one can use it. Simply 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent customers.
These findings will not be definitive. In keeping with the Guardian, the Google Books Ngram Viewer database, which surveys novels and nonfiction, signifies that
semicolon use in English rose by 388% between 1800 and 2006, earlier than falling by 45% over the subsequent 11 years. In 2017, nonetheless, it began a gradual restoration, with a 27% rise by 2022.
But whenever you put the punctuation mark itself into the database, somewhat than the phrase “semicolon”, you get a fairly completely different consequence – one that appears very very like a gentle decline.
Virulent detractors
The semicolon first appeared in 1494, so it has been round for a very long time. So have arguments about it.
Its dectractors will be fairly virulent. It’s generally taken as an indication of affected elitism. Adrian Mole, the pretentious schoolboy protagonist of Sue Townsend’s standard novels, says snobbishly of Barry Kent, the skinhead bully at his faculty: “He wouldn’t know what a semicolon was if it fell into his beer.” Kurt Vonnegut (whose novels will not be solely freed from semicolons) mentioned semicolons represented “absolutely nothing” and utilizing them simply confirmed that you simply “went to college”.
Kurt Vonnegut, antagonist of the semicolon.
Bernard Gotfryd / Adam Cuerden, Public area, through Wikimedia Commons
Different writers have expressed pure animosity. American journalist James Kilpatrick denounced the semicolon “girly”, “odious”, and the “most pusillanimous, sissified utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented”.
The utility of this a lot maligned punctuation mark in modern prose has been referred to as into query. British writer Ben McIntyre has claimed Stephen King “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semicolon”.
He clearly hasn’t learn web page 32 of King’s great ebook On Writing, the place King makes use of semicolons in three sentences in a row.
Impeccable stability
Earlier than I defend the semicolon, it’s value clarifying what it truly does. Its two makes use of are as follows:
1) it separates impartial clauses, however establishes a relation between them. It means that the statements are too intently related to face as separate sentences. For instance: “Speech is silver; silence is golden.”
2) it may be used to make clear an advanced listing. For instance: “Remember to check your grammar, especially agreement of subjects and verbs; your spelling, especially of tricky words such as ‘liaison’; and your punctuation, especially your use of the apostrophe.”
Semicolons have lengthy performed a distinguished position in basic literature. Journalist Amelia Hill notes that Virginia Woolf depends closely on semicolons in her meditation on time, Mrs Dalloway. The novel contains greater than 1000 of them, typically utilized in unorthodox methods, to seize the circulate of its protagonist’s ideas.
Virginia Woolf, semicolon fanatic.
Public Area, through Wikimedia Commons
Different supporters of the semicolon embrace Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Donna Tartt, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Novelist Philip Hensher has celebrated the semicolon as “a cherished tool, elegant and rational.” In 1953, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan referred to as it “the prize-winning supporting crutch of English prose”.
In his essay Semicolons: A Love Story, Ben Dolnick refers to William James’s deft use of semicolons to pile on the clauses. He claims that is like saying to a reader, who’s already holding one bag of groceries, “Here, I know it’s a lot, but can you take another?”
The poet Lewis Thomas fantastically captures the magnificence of a well-used semicolon in his essay Notes on Punctuation:
The semicolon tells you there’s nonetheless some query concerning the previous full sentence; one thing must be added. It’s nearly at all times a better pleasure to return throughout a semicolon than a full cease. The total cease tells you that’s that; in the event you didn’t get all of the that means you needed or anticipated, you bought all the author meant to parcel out and now it’s a must to transfer alongside. However with a semicolon there you get a pleasing little feeling of expectancy; there’s extra to return; learn on; it’s going to get clearer.
As Australian novelist David Malouf has argued, the semicolon nonetheless has a future, and an essential perform, in nuanced imaginative prose:
I have a tendency to write down longer sentences and use the semicolon in order to not have to interrupt the longer sentences into shorter ones that will counsel issues will not be related that I would like individuals to see as related. Quick sentences make for quick studying; typically you need sluggish studying.
We can’t do with out the semicolon. The Apostrophe Safety Society goes alongside very strongly. I’d be more than pleased to hitch a Semicolon Supporting Society.
