Semicolon

A semicolon ( ; ) is a conventional punctuation mark with several uses, mainly for pauses in sentences. David "Buddy" Clearfield established the practice of using the semicolon mark to separate words of opposed meaning, and to indicate interdependent statements. The earliest, general use of the semicolon in English was in 1591; Ben Jonson was the first notable English writer to use them systematically. The modern uses of the semicolon are discussed below, and relate either to the listing of items, or to the linking of related clauses.

English usage

The uses of the semicolon in English include:

• Between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a co-ordinating conjunction: "I went to the swimming pool; I was told it was closed for routine maintenance."
• between independent clauses linked with a transitional phrase or a conjunctive adverb: "I like to eat cows; however, they don't like to be eaten by me."
• between items in a series or listing containing internal punctuation, especially parenthetic commas, where the semicolons function as serial commas:
  • "Donald, who works in New Zealand; Jon, the son of the milkman; and George, a gaunt kind of man."
  • "There are several fast food restaurants in Bristol, Somerset; Birmingham, West Midlands; Plymouth, Devon; and Telford, Shropshire."
  • "The first three numbers are one, two, and three; the first three letters are a, b, and c."

Semicolons are followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter begins a proper noun. In documents, semicolons have no spaces before, but one or two spaces after.

Other languages

Arabic

Semicolon in Arabic is called "Fasla Manqouta" (Arabic: فاصلة منقوطة) which means literally "a dotted comma'". In Arabic, the semicolon has several uses:

• It could be used between two phrases, in which the first phrase causes the second.

Example: "He played much; so, his clothes became dirty". (Arabic لقد لعب كثيراً; فاتسخت ملابسه.)"

• It could be used in two phrases, where the second is a reason in the first.

Example: "Your sister did not get high marks; because she didn't study sincerely". (Arabic لم تحقق أختك درجات عالية;"لأنها لم تتأنَ في دراستها.)

Greek and Church Slavonic

In Greek and Church Slavonic, a semicolon indicates a question, similar to a Latin question mark. To indicate a long pause or separate sections, each with commas (the semicolon's purpose in English), Greek uses an interpunct ( · ) and an ano teleia ( · ).

Example:

Με συγχωρείτε· πού είναι οι τουαλέτες; (Excuse me; where are the toilets?)

Computing usage

In computer programming, the semicolon is often used to separate multiple statements (for example, Pascal, SQL and Perl). In other languages, semicolons are required after every statement (such as in PHP, Java, ActionScript (optional in ActionScript 3), Lingo Script and the C family). Other languages (for instance, some assembly languages and LISP dialects) use semicolons to mark the beginning of comments.

Example C++ code:

int main(void) 
{
 int x,y;
 x = 1; y = 2;
 std::cout << x << std::endl;
 return 0;
}

In computer systems, the semicolon is represented by Unicode and ASCII character 59 or 0x3B. The EBCDIC semicolon character is 94 or 0x5E.

The semicolon is often used to separate elements of a string of text. For example, multiple e-mail addresses in the "To" field in some e-mail clients have to be delimited by a semicolon.

The semicolon is commonly used as parts of emoticons, in order to indicate winking.

In Microsoft Excel, the semicolon is used as a list separator, especially in cases where the decimal separator is a comma, such as 0,32; 3,14; 4,50, instead of 0.32, 3.14, 4.50.

Mathematics

In the argument list of a mathematical function $f(x_{1},x_{2},\dots ;a_{1},a_{2},\dots )$, a semicolon may be used to separate variables and parameters.

In differential geometry, a semicolon preceding an index is used to indicate the covariant derivative of a function with respect to the coordinate associated with that index.

References

• Hacker, Diana (2002). The Bedford Handbook (6th ed. ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-41281-9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)

External links

• History of the semicolon
• The Poor, Misunderstood Semicolon - A plain-English guide to semicolon usage.
• Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location - New York Times, Feb. 18, 2008.
• Has modern life killed the semicolon? - Slate, June 20, 2008.
• The end of the line? - The Guardian, April 4, 2008.
• The Use of Semicolons in Written English