I’ve gone soft on semicolons. For years, my position on these strange little squiggles has been as follows: I hate them. I have good reason. Semicolons don’t come up much in my editing work. Most ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The questions begin: Can I use a semicolon here? Should it be a colon instead? What’s the rule again? Oh foot, I’ll just give up ...

In Kurt Vonnegut’s 2005 essay collection A Man Without a Country, he includes the following message on punctuation: Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are ...

It is a piece of punctuation that has divided writers and authors for centuries. Novelists including Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen have not shied away from using them, but that has not stopped ...

If you stare down at the semicolon key in fear, unsure of what power might be released if you press it, never fear. This video eloquently explains how to unleash the semicolon’s power correctly. Is it ...

Here’s a fun thing you can do with your writing: Take any two simple, clear sentences and use a semicolon to mush them into one. For example, imagine you have a paragraph with just two sentences. “The ...

Love or detest it, the semicolon is the most divisive punctuation mark of the modern era. Should we even care? “In any case, I had been part-time for a while, coming into the publishing house one day ...

Today we examine a challenging procedure: a semicolonoscopy. Please notice that the colon in the previous sentence serves to rivet our attention onto what comes next. Think of teeing up a golf ball. A ...

The age-old semicolon is dying out as Britons admit to never or rarely using the punctuation mark, a study has found. In 19th century English literature it appeared once in every 205 words, but today ...