semicolons

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2005 : May : 28

semicolons
By Mary

A semicolon is used to connect two complete thoughts (complete sentences):

Proteacher is a teacher chat board; I find many useful ideas there.

Those are two complete thoughts, or sentences, and must either be separated
by a period, and written as two distinct sentences, or joined by a semicolon. Using a comma in this instance would result in a run-on sentence, and would be incorrect.
Commas are used in a variety of ways:
He said, "What?"
It introduces dialogue.
Pick up cheese, milk, and dogfood at the store.
It separates items in a list.
Dear Mrs. Smith,
It's used in the salutation

of a letter.

Yours truly,
It's used in the closing of a letter.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we quit.
However, you could come back later.
It sets off a dependent clause.

My father, the mailman, works this route.
It is used where there is a natural pause.

There could be other instances, but those are the ones which come to mind (there's another example of using a comma to set off a pause). Basically, a comma has many uses, while a semicolon has only one.