this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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I use semi-colons a lot. People are so intimidated by them and they refuse to admit how simple they are; it's literally the combination of a comma and a colon, that's it. Use it for when both are needed.
That is incorrect (to my understanding), it's the combination of a comma and a period; it only resembles a colon in appearance.
My colon definitely doesn't look like that and if yours does I suggest a doctor's visit.
~~Fun fact:~~ Mildly annoying fact: a surgery to remove a colon is called a colectomy. A surgery to remove part of a colon is called hemicolectomy. Come on!!! Semi- and hemi- are practically synonyms!
And I can't quite remember or find right now what they call what remains, but I distinctly remember that it's not called a semicolon. Medicine is so dull.
It's just a super comma; you can more-or-less use it as a drop-in replacement for EM-Dashes that LLNs ruined for everybody. Also useful for long, complicated lists that feature too many commas and get confusing to read
Law of Large Number ruined everything
This isn’t right. Both sides of a semicolon need to be independent clauses. That’s not the case with a comma or an em dash; both of which serve similar, but largely distinct, purposes.
Independent but related clauses is how I treat it. I wouldn't put a semicolon between unrelated clauses.
That’s exactly it.
Eww, a grammar Nazi
Qwen loves semicolons. It does love dashes as well
Welp ~ time to switch to tilde