Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

by Cecelia Watson

Deep down, I think most rule lovers know this. I have yet to meet a rule lover who’s been able to tell me that he or she actually learned good English usage by memorizing or consulting rules. And even if memorizing rules were a good way to learn English successfully, where would knowing and using all the rules with precision actually get you? You could write perfectly “correct” English all day and still not have what most of us really want, which is style. We want our words to have impact. We want our boss to implement that great new idea, we want our texts to inspire love and our tweets to get laughs, we want the eulogy to do justice, we want to sound breezy and cool in that social media profile, we want the A on the paper, we want to persuade and to be understood. Following the rules will not be sufficient to accomplish these things; some of these abilities elude even the people who consider themselves Masters. Maybe the Masters can speak “standard English” and maybe they can write well enough in obscure jargon and byzantine syntax to be published in some niche academic field, but that might be the only English they can speak—and that is a limitation and liability. So what if you know the password to get into the Ivory Tower if you can’t get back out of it when you need some fresh air and open sky?