Getting the skinny on the semicolon
The Oxford comma provokes spirited debate, and many people are passionately pro this piece of punctuation (as we discussed a few weeks ago). The semicolon is another mark that inspires strong emotions, but in this case reactions generally lean toward hatred or confusion. Kurt Vonnegut 鈥� 鈥淎ll they do is show you鈥檝e been to college鈥� 鈥� and George Orwell detested them. Historian and聽philosopher Cecelia Watson, though, loves semicolons so much that she has written a wonderful book about them, 鈥淪emicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.鈥�
Semicolons, like most punctuation marks, were first used as a way to indicate pauses when reading aloud, like rests in music. A comma denoted the shortest pause, followed by the semicolon, colon, and period. This was one of the first things Mary Johnson explained in her popular guide to what all young women should know, 鈥淓very Young Woman鈥檚 Companion鈥� (1770), even before she broached key issues like 鈥淚nstructions for making of strong Gravies鈥� and 鈥減reventing Servants from being easily imposed on by Tradesmen鈥�: 鈥淎t a Comma, rest only whilst you can say privately to yourself one; at a Semicolon, pause whilst you can say one, two, deliberately.鈥�
By the early 1800s, semicolons had become part of written syntax, marking clauses, not pauses. These clauses could then be analyzed by grammarians, who capitalized on the 19th-century mania for the natural sciences to position themselves as scientists too. Mathematics and chemistry had lots of complicated symbols; grammarians created the fiendishly difficult sentence diagram.聽
The process of induction 鈥� formulating general rules or hypotheses from particular observations 鈥� was thought to be central to grammar as well as to physics and biology. According to Dr. Watson, grammarians even proposed that their science was the most important.聽
Before semicolons got the scientific treatment, writers used them with abandon. But as rules multiplied and it became more difficult to employ them 鈥渃orrectly,鈥� writers began to avoid them. There has been a steady decline from 鈥淪ense and Sensibility鈥� (1811), which contains a semicolon every three sentences, to 鈥淭wilight鈥� (2005), with one every 55. Today, even such a masterly stylist as A.S. Byatt admits, 鈥淚 feel I don鈥檛 understand them. ... I鈥檝e always been baffled ... by anybody who had a very strong idea about when to put them in.鈥�
Dr. Watson advises writers not to worry overmuch about 鈥渃orrectness.鈥� For anyone who still empathizes with Ms. Byatt, though, stay tuned for next week, when we鈥檒l look at some of the rules that have made the semicolon so confusing to so many people.
