You Say Potato; I Say Potato
So now that you're a master of the comma (don't worry, once you've read my post you will be – or at least you can pretend), I'll give you a new tool to add to your treasure chest. Hmm, that's a bad metaphor. We'll get into that later.
Semi-colons – in my opinion, one of the most useful grammatical constructs – is quite simple once you have the basics of commas down. Here's how they work:
- Step one: Write a complete sentence. John ran to the store.
- Step two: Write another complete sentence (preferably one related to the first sentence). It was closed when he got there.
- Step three: Join the two with a semi-colon were one would typically place a comma + coordinating conjunction.
For example:
Coordinating conjunction - John ran to the store, (and/but) it was closed when he got there.
Semi-colon - John ran to the store; it was closed when he got there.
It's as simple as that.
Here's another common use of the semi-colon, and this one is more of a way to alleviate confusion at times when a list can get long or wordy.
John had a laundry list of things to do: he had to go to the bank; get groceries – milk, bread, juice, fruit for lunches; walk the dog; and pick up his mother from the doctor.
The intention with the above example is to alleviate a collection of commas that just looks messy. Semi-colons work very nicely to break that up and distinguish which bits go with what.
This is one in a series of articles on punctuation and grammar
Table of Contents:
- Grammar. Yes. Grammar: An introductory post on the series
- That's It. Period: A post on the full stop.
- OMG! What's the Deal?: A post on question marks and exclamation points.
- Commas, Commas, Commas: A post on the use of commas


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