By PJ Parrish
See this guy at left? The one that looks like the kind of guy who would correct the grammar in your Facebook “I luv wiener dogs” post?
This is Aldus Manutius. He was an Italian printer who founded the Aldine Press, and he devoted most of his life to publishing rare texts. His flaming desire to preserve Greek manuscripts marked him as a great innovator of his age. He also introduced a small, portable book format, which revolutionized personal reading habits and probably led to the modern paperback. So I guess I should thank him for that since that’s where my humble beginnings in this business lie.
He also is credited as the father of the semicolon. For which I can’t forgive him.
If you’ve read my posts here on the beauty of apt punctuation, you know how passionate I can be about some things. I really dislike exclamation marks, for instance. I’ll excuse one or two in really hot action scenes, like “You’re gonna die really ugly, Butkiss!” Or in moments of intense emotion in a Stephen King novel, like “Don’t go in the basement!” But usually, I side with F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously said using exclamation marks is “like laughing at your own joke.”
And don’t get me going on the rampant misuse of the humble apostrophe. Shaw called them “uncouth bacilli,” so his writings are peppered with stuff like didnt, wont and aint. Today, most people can’t or won’t be bothered to learn how to punctuate with the apostrophe. It’s like, banana’s out there! (sic)
But then there’s the semicolon. I was an English major, so I know in my brain what the thing is supposed to do: create a pause between two related independent clauses. As in: My dog Archie, sleeping at my side, just passed gas; he ran out of the room faster than I could so I got the blame when the husband came in. But in my heart, I hate them. And I really hate them in novels.
Thankfully, the semicolon is on the wane. According to a study from the Babbel, the online language-learning platform: “Semicolon usage in British English books has fallen by nearly 50% in the past two decades.”
But The Thing has been dying a slow death for a long time now. A study of semicolon use in U.S. publishing from 1920 to 2019 noted a dramatic slide. Newspapers, magazines, and fiction and nonfiction books all soured on the semicolon, though nonfiction after 2000 did see an uptick from the depths.
Uptick…probably had something to do with lawyers.
The Babbel study set off a predictably anal reaction in the British press. The Independent lamented: “Our best punctuation mark is dying out; people need to learn how to use it.” The Financial Times whined: “Semicolons bring the drama; that’s why I love them.” Gawd, loosen your bun, Wilma. Only The Spectator had the sense to write a wry obit: “The semicolon had its moment; that moment is over.”
I’m not alone in my distaste for The Things. George Orwell called them “an uncessary stop.” Cormac McCarthy called its useage “Idiocy.” Even Edgar Allen Poe called for the dash to replace it. (Yeah! Go, Eddie!)
Here’s a passage from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. Find the semicolons and then you tell me if they work.
Having lived in Westminster—how many years now? Over twenty—one feels even in the midst of traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.
It’s argued that the semicolon between the “warning, musical” and “the hour, irrevocable” achieves an “indescribable pause,” as Woolf puts it. Would a full stop have worked better? Would periods (the likely choice of modern writers) been less fussy? And the ultimate question: Who am I to quibble with Virginia Woolf?
I dunno. To me, a semicolon in fiction just never feels right. It feels pretentious and archaic. To you, or other writers, it can feel…useful, even lending a certain gravitas. Martin Luther King used them with magnificent ease. Ditto Twain, Chandler, Rushdie.
The best quote I found about this comes from Abraham Lincoln, no less. He wrote, in 1864:
“I have a great respect for the semi-colon; it’s a very useful little chap.” But then he adds the kicker: “With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling.”
Indeed. Fiction is about finding your way around the placement of words, sentences and phrases. It is all about feeling your way, feeling period. If it weren’t, you and I would be writing legal briefs. So, okay….go forth, crime dogs, and semicolonize. If it feels good, do it. I’ll just look the other way.
I like em dashes; I even have my autocorrect set to turn == into —. But I checked my WWII thriller and found I used 90 of the forbidden fruit therein. A sample: “You’re no spy, Mary; you’re an analyst—a proper job for a proper Bostonian.” Many (40) of these appeared in the front matter and back matter. My dystopian novel employed a mere 46, but is a much shorter m/s. My book on the psychology of addiction contains 60. I can only conclude that semicolons are addictive and caution others to eschew them; it’s obviously too late for me.
I cannot tell a lie….when I go back and read my old romance novels, yes, I, too, betook of the forbidden fruit. And they look sort of quaint now, like I was revisiting a different version of myself. As Bob Dylan sang, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” (Wonder if he used a semicolon in that line?)
I prefer em dashes to semicolons. In all fairness to Virginia Woolf, maybe her editor added a semicolon where a comma or em dash once lived. Years ago, I had an editor do the same, and it drove me crazy.
I can’t imagine a modern editor doing that! One of my fave authors, Shirley Jackson, used a lot of semicolons. Oddly, I barely notice them in her work.
My publisher’s style guide forbids the beasts—thankfully. I found it interesting that Cormac McCarthy cared enough to comment—Blood Meridian was basically one long run on sentence, LOL!!
LOLOL! Hey, that’s one of my fave writers you’re dissing.
I don’t dislike the lowly semicolon but it always brings me to a full stop while I figure out why it’s there. I usually think that two sentences instead would have been smoother.
Ha! That’s it. It does force you to pause. But now, as you said, the pause is more WTF is that doing there?
I’ve never used a semicolon in a work of fiction. My longtime editor opposed them as well. I’m not opposed to them in nonfiction. Writing short sentences adds to suspense. As with most rules, I think writers should learn them and then break them as they find most effective. It occurs to me, though, that using a semicolon could be a tool in characterization?
A tool in what way? Curious what you mean. Might using semicolon in say a character’s thoughts reveal that character to be a bit more formal/rigid/pedantic/academic? Maybe. But I could never see a semicolon used in dialogue. It’s just not how folks speak. Just my opinion.
Semicolons in nonfiction are okay, but in fiction, nope. Jerks me right out of the story.
These days, Kurt Vonnegut’s quote is probably considered insensitive but he said: “First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
Well, that’s interesting. I have never seen the FULL Vonnegut quote, only the part about college.
Love the Lincoln quote, Kris…
My editor once said, when I first started authoring, “I don’t ever want to see one of these on a page you’ve written, ever again…”
Did it for me. 🙂
A sharp slap on the hand should be eough. 🙂
From my personal style guide, submitted with every manuscript: “No semicolons, grammar notwithstanding.”
Can’t stand the little buggers.
Semicolons are for formal writing so serious nonfiction, not popular fiction or nonfiction. So, posh articles in “The New Yorker,” not a blog on how you love puppies. That is the current style rule so you are not being edgy.
Could not agree more. I can’t recall the last time I even saw one of the little buggers in current fiction. Okay…just went and pulled a book off my shelf and there randomly opening to page 72, I found two. Does Donna Tartt count as current? (The Goldfinch)
It’s mainstream literary fiction which follows rules of its own, not genre rules.
“Punctuation is characterization.” I have a first-person narrator who turns her nose up at semicolons. Not stacatto enough. Not definite enough. Not passionate enough.
I have another first-person narrator who, until Fate dropped a boyfriend into her lap, was friendless. She spent her time in a library filled with mostly older books, affecting her speech as well as her writing. To her, the semicolon is as natural as breathing; perhaps more so, given that people are trying to kill her but no one is criticizing her punctuation.
I think I would like following your libary-narrator.
Follow the link on my profile, and all (well, some) will be revealed.
I only use semicolons two places. In lists, This car comes with: blue paint; four tires; and air conditioning.
The other is tattoos. “a semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to.” Have you ever seen someone with a semicolon tattoo? The sentence in that quote is you. The Semicolon Project advocates for preventing suicide. The full quote is “a semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life”.
;
I like that. Okay. It makes me begrudgingly allow a tiny bit of room in my heart for the Thing.
Although I don’t recall having used a semicolon in my books, I don’t mind seeing it. It reminds me of the pause sign in music, the fermata, that bird’s eye symbol that lets the note linger in the air. Take a breath and think about what you just read, then go on.
Also, I’m a big fan of Aldus Manutius and his motto “Festina Lente.” I wrote a blog post about that subject a few years ago:
https://killzoneblog.com/2021/12/festina-lente.html
Guys, you should all go back and re-read Kay’s post on poor old Aldus. It does him better justice than mine did. I like the idea behind Festina Lente. It’s useful in so much of life. Festina lente is a Latin phrase that literally means “make haste slowly.”
Reminds me of another similar quote I love from the choreographer George Balanchine: “Slower is faster.” Though he demanded speed from his dancers in performance, he also advised patience in attaining craft. Edward Villella, who I had the great pleasure of befriending when I was a dance writer, said about this: “I had to learn that slower is faster. If you practice every day with patience and correctness, you will get there. It’s like preparing for a jump. You can’t rush. You must summon the appropriate energy.”
So it is with writing. You have to prepare, constantly, for that jump.
I am reminded of a certain blog post from yesteryear:
https://killzoneblog.com/2010/10/great-semi-colon-debate.html
Interestingly, I read an article that said AI botwriter loves em dashes, and if we use them too much readers may soon start to suspect we are using AI text ourselves. Well…tough! I like em dashes. They are handy for many things, esp. interruptions in dialogue.
I do like the proper use of semi-colons in nonfiction. They serve a good purpose.
Not in my fiction. No, not ever. Don’t like seeing them in fiction, period. Don’t like parentheses, either. Love em dashes. Don’t dare count how many I use. But to me, that’s how people talk. Pauses, switching subjects, and in deep POV, intervening thought.
Sorry I’m so late today. We’re having some work done and my schedule is all vermischt.
I was told early on that a semi colon was just a weak period. I never use them…that said they do turn up in my books occasionally…but I didn’t put them there.