It begins with a squinting of the eyes. Hm. A semicolon. You approach it with caution. Ok, I can do this. One dot, plus a comma. There. No, wait. That doesn’t look quite right. The questions begin: ...

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The semicolon may have a reputation as being the most aloof and intimidating of all punctuation marks. It’s stronger than a comma but lacks the finality of a period. In any case where you might want ...

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

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Cecelia Watson, author of “Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.” Historian and philosopher of science. Faculty member in Bard College’s Language and Thinking program.

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 ...

Experts believe that the semicolon (;) is in danger of becoming extinct from the English language because of its lack of use. Surveys showed that more than half of Britons never use it in their ...

A colon is used to give emphasis, present dialogue, introduce lists or text, and clarify composition titles. Emphasis—Capitalize the first word after the colon only if it is a proper noun or the start ...

Of all the punctuation marks, the semicolon is far from the most popular. It's fallen in usage since it's heyday in the 1800s. Why was it so big then, and what changed? It might be that folks today ...