Semicolon or not to semicolon

Weekend post means that I can think a little harder rather than just randomly typing. Looking back I know that I was never taught how to use a semicolon and to be fair it has not really ruined my life. However, some people feel that they are semicolon types, for me a new sentence will do just as well.

Let's get technical. The most common use, amongst people in the know, is to use a semicolon to join two independent clauses without using a conjunction, connective or linking word, such as 'and'. So in this case both clauses have equal value, neither one is subordinate to the other, in fact you could just insert a full stop and capital letter and create two sentences instead. So why use a semicolon? It is beyond me but I suppose it counts as another type of punctuation mark and therefore ticks teacher or examination boxes. I am not quite posh enough to use it in this way. It scares me a little. What if I use it wrongly and look like a complete plonker? Instead of creating variety or emphasising relatedness I create a mistake!

There must be another way of exploiting the little dot and comma (;). I must admit that I have been known to attempt to be clever by pushing my boundaries whilst still feeling in control. So how did I do that? Well the simple answer is that the other use of a semicolon is between items in a complex list. Begin with a colon (:) then off you go! The ideal way to simplify lists which already contain commas to group items together. Let me give you an example. Last year I visited some amazing cities: Paris with its fabulous food, especially 'Religieuse'; Ljubljana, the heart of Europe; Croatia for some stunning scenery and Poland just to hang out with friends.

In case you did not realise putting a semicolon in a list is a double whammy because you have ticked the colon box without even realising! Do not ask me for a rule about colons. I am not there yet and very few people use them correctly so I am happy to stay in ignorance.

Happy weekend!