this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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I don't think Prem Thakker's mastered semicolons quite yet.
sometimes in math textbooks they use semicolons when listing things. maybe prem thakker’s writing this post for the mathematicians
You can use semicolons when listing things instead of commas, but that's usually only for clarity when listing things with commas in them (e.g. "Last summer I visited Las Vegas, Nevada; Tucson, Arizona; Seattle, Washington; and Sacramento, California.")
I'm mean, you're not wrong about the semicolon usage but your example is absolute dogwater. I may be sleep deprived but why in Poseidon's briny deeps would you use a semicolon to separate sentence fragments into their own phrases?!
e.g. "Last year, I went to Germany, Spain, Italy, and France; and ate schnitzel, ham, gelato, and olives."
Because that was the usage I was describing. What you're describing is just ordinary usage.
That comes with Premium Thakker;
Semicolons can be used to list items that are more than just a word or two long, and may/may not contain commas. So if you're listing phrases contain commas, putting a comma between list entries would be confusing as fuck.
For example... I will list a few US capital cities, and their corresponding states: Albany, New York, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Sacramento, California, Houston, Texas...
Compare that to: Albany, New York; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Sacramento, California; Houston, Texas.
See? Much clearer.
I don't know if this person did it exactly correctly, and I'm not going to go back and read it again to check, but the idea itself is just fine.
Unless a lot has changed about semi-colons in the past 20 years.
Edit: I reluctantly went up to read it again, and it seems like the only thing missing would be a colon after "The combo of" and a comma before "really says it all"
I think the semicolons are correct too (though the colon you mentioned would add a lot of clarity). This grammar rule comes up infrequently enough that it can be jarring to encounter a semicolon before reaching the end of a properly formed independent clause.
How can they when schools are so dangerous!?