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When are you supposed to use a semicolon?

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Anonymous Posted

When are you supposed to use a semicolon?

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You are to use a semicolon in a couple of instances:

1) When connecting two sentences, you can use a semicolon.  However both must be complete sentences.  Example:  The car is red; the car has been painted several times.

2) A semicolon can also be used to seperate items in a list when a comma has already been used.  Example: On the picnic, I took the following: grapes, red and green; bananas, green and yellow; and apples, green and red.

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When connecting two sentences with a semicolon, the sentences must be related to each other. The use of a semicolon serves to illustrate this close relationship; a period does not.  If a period is used after the first sentence, the reader comes to a full stop before reading the second sentence and he/she just pauses after reading the first sentence if a semicolon is used. Therefore, the relationship between the two sentences is much more obvious.

A more common use of the semicolon is to separate two independent clauses. 

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A semicolon is used to separate independent clauses in a sentence when a comma has already been used.  For example:  Cindy is from San Diego, California; Harry is from Dallas, Texas.

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A semi colon (;) is used:

  • To join two independent clauses example: Some people like an ice cream; others like a pie or cake
  • To avoid confusion between two ideas example: Some people like ice cream, which can be eaten in the Summer; others like pie or cake, which can be eaten in any season. 
  • To connect to lengthy clauses with commas already inserted example: Some people like chocolate, vanilla or blueberry ice cream; but others, for some reasons, like chocolate, cherry or blueberry cake.
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