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 ...

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: ...

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.

Happy National Punctuation Day, Internet! To celebrate, we've prepared a guide to the most hated punctuation mark of all: the semicolon. Although you won't need it often, it can add essential clarity ...

Writers and editors don’t always agree; really, they don’t. There was a time, years ago, when I was an editor at the now defunct Times-Union that I made some changes — necessary, I’m sure — to a story ...

Do you know how to use a semicolon correctly? Even if you think you do, are you sure? That odd cross between a colon and a comma may be the most frequently misused and misunderstood punctuation mark ...

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 ...

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 ...

Surely the most maligned mark of punctuation among journalists is the semicolon. They fear it, avoid it, doubt their ability to use it correctly. It seems stodgy, archaic and academic, traits they are ...

A recent study has found a 50 per cent decline in the use of semicolons over the last two decades. The decline accelerates a longterm trend: In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly ...

As punctuation marks go, the semicolon is often misunderstood and people may use it with hesitation. But according to Project Semicolon, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention, the symbol has a ...