Tips from the Writing Center: Semicolons

It has been said that a reader can identify an academic writer by her use of semicolons. Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "Do not use semicolons; All they do is show you’ve been to college.” They say the only writers who use semicolons are academics. This is close to the truth. I went down a rabbit hole recently trying to find semicolons being used in non-academic writing. The newspaper and popular magazine articles I looked at did not use them. Officially, the AP Style allows for the use of the semicolon, but in practice, many AP writers do not use them. There are some fiction writers who use semicolons. NEOMED students and faculty are encouraged to use semicolons when appropriate. Semicolons are used to separate two complete thoughts. Also called independent clauses, these thoughts are often closely related. (I saw a duck; that duck was yellow.)

The other place NEOMED students and faculty will use semicolons is to separate individual citations in a serial list in parenthetical citations (Smith, 2022; Aultman, 2023; Frederickson, 2020).

Truth be told, I use the semicolon often and encourage its use.

-submitted by Brian Harrell, Writing Center Specialist