As a semicolon enthusiast, people frequently come to me with their Semicolon Snags, asking me where and when they can use a semicolon and asking if it’s really that thing between a comma and a period.
Let me get this out of the way: A semicolon is not a comma, and nor is it a period! It has qualities of both, and it also has unique qualities that no other piece of punctuation possesses. It is truly a glorious type of punctuation and should be revered among any who enjoy the English language.
Now, the semicolon can act as a type of comma under certain circumstances. For example, it can be a kind of “super comma” when listing things to distinguish between when you’re listing a new thing and when you’re just describing a list. Here’s an example:
I went to the store and got apples, which were the reddest I’d ever seen; oranges, which were already beginning to rot; bananas, which were not yet ripe; and Tide pods, for my DISHWASHER.
As you can see from this example, I used a comma when describing the object, but then used a semicolon to distinguish between each object so that the reader could not get confused. In other words, the semicolons served as a type of barrier between each object to show that I was moving on to a new description. It’s possible to write the sentence without…
