It's High Time We Ditched the Semicolon
Let's eradicate the pointless punctuation and make room on our keyboards for something better
You know when you’re writing something on your word processor of choice, and you get that little green squiggly line suggesting a formatting issue? Then you right click and the suggestion is something vague about inserting a semicolon instead? Yeah? Well I’m sick of it, personally. Since when semicolons been so important to stringing together a coherent sentence?
We’ve all heard the arguments against semicolons already, and you’ve no doubt heard the Kurt Vonnegut quote before:
“Do not use semicolons. They… represent absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
And while true and worth repeating, there is more to it than that.
Why semicolons suck
What we consider to be a semicolon today was invented in Venice in 1494 by a publisher called Aldus Manutius, and for much of history it had no strictly defined function. For most of its lifespan, it has seemed to signal the need for a pause, or simply a change from the usual comma or colon, with some authors simply preferring to write them over the latter alternatives.
Somewhere along the way, it was assigned a purpose. That’s right: assigned. It existed and some purpose had to be given to it. But why? If it exists for the sake of existing, then for efficiency’s sake it isn’t essential and doesn’t need to be there.
A semicolon will make your text look ugly, but school textbooks teaching them to kids will claim how clear they make a sentence by breaking up a list, grouping connecting items, or most bafflingly of all, to link two independent sections that are closely linked.
Fair enough, but what about a comma or a full stop?
Now, you might disagree, but a common example given of what a semicolon offers is the following from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. It is the opening line in fact:
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
Defenders of the semicolon will claim that these two sections here, about times being the best and worst cannot possibly exist in separate sentences, because they are too closely linked, and the meaning would be lost. Therefore, they say, a semicolon has to be the answer.
But what about, dare I suggest, a simple comma?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
That is, in fact, how most translations and editions of Dickens’ novel has the opening line today. Why? Because it reads just as well and looks better.
An alternative?
Semicolons are vital to nothing but the grammar correcting programs out there desperately wanting to find fault, the intellectual phonies who with their usage want to promote a ‘proper’ way of writing, and to teachers wanting to infuriate and confuse students. Writers: don’t be pressured in to making your writing conform to the whims of a semicolon. Let’s make a concerted effort to do away with it, and with the extra space we’ve created on our keyboards, put something there far more useful.
Like what, you say? Here’s what I’ve been coming to: a few suggestions for an alternative to the semicolon (and these all exist if you want to look them up).
1. The interrobang
Not only for it’s delightful name, but it’s also incredibly useful, making it an improvement on the semicolon already. Rather than asking an excited question and using both ? and !, we can smash them in to one fantastic overlapping symbol and save a character. Much better, eh?!
2. The exclamation comma
See, the problem with an exclamation point/mark is it ends a sentence. But how often in real life do we shout something, say something with excitement and gusto, and then carry on at a quieter volume? Enter the exclamation comma, an internal punctuation (i.e. not a sentence ender, but something that lives within a sentence, like a semicolon does) that can convey emotion in text without ending.
3. The question comma
Eseentially the same thing as the exclamation comma, only for an internal question while continuing to speak. Less useful, I feel, but still a better alternative to a semicolon.
4. The percontation point
Basically a backwards question mark used for the purposes of highlighting a rhetorical question. Sometimes in text, the irony of a rhetorical question can be lost, and as a result, to leave no doubt in the reader’s mind, this piece of punctuation would save confusion.
5. The dagger and double-dagger
You know when you read something and sometimes there is a little asterisk (*) to signal a footnote? Well, you’ll be familiar with these two alternatives, which resember a dagger (hence the name) with either one line or two. Quite frankly, they are infinitely more useful to a writer, and far nice to look at than countless asterisks’ as the footnotes rack up.
6. The asterism
Used mostly to denote a break in text, similar to how the three dots Medium uses to split sections does the same (used at the bottom of the page). There’s no real way of a writer including this on their text with a keyboard, but I say let’s bring it back.
7. The sarcmark
Because pointing out sarcasm is half the fun, right? This little punctuation allows a writer to make absolutely no doubt in the reader’s mind that they are being sarcastic. Without it, someone could read, let’s say, an article on Medium, and take it entirely at face value without realising the intended sarcastic nature. And sure, you could say the job of the writer is to convey this themselves, rather than lazily click a button that tells the reader point blank, but having the option would be nice, wouldn’t it? And better than sticking a :P on the end.
Conclusion
There are plenty of others out there, but my point remains that anything would be better than a semicolon. So often I read an article or book and find it littered with the things.
And I know it will be the editor or some program like Grammarly doing it. Whether we do replace the semicolon, whether we get rid and abandon it and leave its space on the keyboard empty as a reminder of our past mistakes, or whether we just ignore it and hope it goes away, it doesn’t matter.
The important thing is the semicolon is gone.
Don’t let it ruin your writing anymore.
:P
About the Creator
R P Gibson
British writer of history, humour and occasional other stuff. I'll never use a semi-colon and you can't make me. More here - https://linktr.ee/rpgibson
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