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grammar and writing tutorial lessons

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Punctuation

The period or full stop

The comma

Connecting clauses

Lists in a sentence

Separating lists of adjectives

Parenthetical phrases

Introductory phrases

Quotation marks

Using single quotation marks

The exclamation mark or exclamation point

The question mark

The colon

When to capitalise after a colon

The semicolon

The apostrophe

Making words plural using apostrophes

The hyphen

Dividing words at the end of a line

Using hyphens to create compound numbers

Using hyphens to avoid confusion

Using hyphens to join words together to form adjectival phrases

Using hyphens with prefixes

Using hyphens for position descriptions

The em and en dash

Parentheses

Brackets

The forward slash

To indicate choice between multiple options

For dates

Fractions

The ellipsis or dot dot dot

The semicolon

It took me a long time to learn the correct ways you can use a semicolon in writing (well, in fact, the colon also took me some time). They might take a little while to learn, but once you’re confident using them they can give your writing that extra edge. They allow you more flexibility with your writing.

The primary use of a semicolon in writing is to indicate or show a relationship between two independent clauses. The semicolon goes in between the two clauses, and tells the reader that what is said in each clause is related.

I used to work late regularly; my job was quite a hard one.

Using a semicolon in this way implies that there is a relationship between what is said in each clause, rather than explicitly saying that there is.

When you want to hammer home to the reader that there’s a relationship between the two clauses, use a conjunction instead of the semicolon:

I used to work late regularly because my job was quite a hard one.

Click here to move on to the next topic: The apostrophe