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Blogs by Marie Wadsworth
Semicolons Should Be Banned? 5/16/2007 7:30:24 PM
I personally think this is really funny, but I work for a newspaper editor and assistant editor who happen to think using semicolons is absolutely pointless. I have a fellow reporter who agrees with this.
For those who don't know semicolons are used in place of and, but or or is omitted in between two compound sentences or in a list when commas are already used.
According to my editors and coworker, semicolons should only be used in a list when commas are already used.
What makes this funny is my husband thinks semicolons are used by writers to get away with a run-on sentence.
I personally can't figure out why my editors are **so** bothered by the use of semicolons outside lists. I mean, my editor has gone so far as to prohibit the use of semicolons outside of lists where commas are already used, even though it's grammatically correct to use them when conjunctions are omitted.
If they feel semicolons shouldn't be used, I must wonder why we teach our children to use semicolons. Or would we just be better not to teach children about semicolons all togehter?
