A squiggle and a dot: the greatest points of contention in history (among some circles). The semicolon has been much used and abused in its four hundred-odd years. Seventeenth and eighteenth century writers did nothing without it; in the nineteenth century a rebellious few voiced their abhorrence, and for most of the twentieth century it was in to deem semicolons as decidedly out.
No other punctuation mark has been so loved or hated, almost to death even (among some circles). And like most things feared or revered, it's been widely misunderstood. It's been called bourgeois, lazy, pompous, old-fashioned, addictive, and too subtle for the brain of man to grasp. It still makes headlines in France.
Writers have been weighing in for nearly two hundred years, and the vote is pretty much split. Who are the friends and enemies of this controversial little mark? Which camp do you belong to and why?
Friends
Virginia Woolf
Ben Jonson
Truman Capote
Ben MacIntyre
Marcel Proust
"You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life." - George Bernard Shaw
"I like them — they are a three-quarter beat to the half and full beats of commas and full stops. Prose has its own musicality, and the more notation the better." - Will Self
"But with the semicolon there you get a pleasant sense of expectancy…" - Lewis Thomas
"But how much notice should we take of those pompous sillies who denounce the semicolon? I say, none at all." - Lynne Truss
Enemies (aka Pompous Sillies)
Ernest Hemingway
Stephen King
George Orwell
Edgar Allen Poe
Somerset Maugham
“The semicolon has become so hateful to me that I feel almost morally compromised when I use it.” - Paul Robinson
“Ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly.” - Donald Barthelme
“How hideous is the semicolon.” – Samuel Beckett
"But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college." - Kurt Vonnegut
