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.

Table of Contents:

1. Grammar. Yes. Grammar: An introductory post on the series
2. That's It. Period: A post on the full stop.
3. OMG! What's the Deal?: A post on question marks and exclamation points.
4. Commas, Commas, Commas: A post on the use of commas