The Associated Press Stylebook 2018 by The Associated Press
Author:The Associated Press [Press, The Associated]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Associated Press
Published: 2018-06-03T22:00:00+00:00
See comma.
semicolon (;) In general, use the semicolon to indicate a greater separation of thought and information than a comma can convey but less than the separation that a period implies.
The basic guidelines:
TO CLARIFY A SERIES: Use semicolons to separate elements of a series when the items in the series are long or when individual segments contain material that also must be set off by commas:
He is survived by a son, John Smith, of Chicago; three daughters, Jane Smith, of Wichita, Kansas, Mary Smith, of Denver, and Susan, of Boston; and a sister, Martha, of Omaha, Nebraska.
Note that the semicolon is used before the final and in such a series.
Another application of this principle may be seen in the cross-references at the end of entries in this book. Because some entries themselves have a comma, a semicolon is used to separate references to multiple entries, as in: See the felony, misdemeanor entry; pardon, parole, probation; and prison, jail.
See dash for a different type of connection that uses dashes to avoid multiple commas.
TO LINK INDEPENDENT CLAUSES: Use semicolon when a coordinating conjunction such as and, but or for is not present: The package was due last week; it arrived today.
If a coordinating conjunction is present, use a semicolon before it only if extensive punctuation also is required in one or more of the individual clauses: They pulled their boats from the water, sandbagged the retaining walls, and boarded up the windows; but even with these precautions, the island was hard-hit by the hurricane.
Unless a particular literary effect is desired, however, the better approach in these circumstances is to break the independent clauses into separate sentences.
PLACEMENT WITH QUOTES: Place semicolons outside quotation marks.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Diaries & Journals | Essays |
Letters | Speeches |
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy(4500)
Bluets by Maggie Nelson(4239)
Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose(4078)
Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini(3954)
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara(3763)
Walking by Henry David Thoreau(3667)
What If This Were Enough? by Heather Havrilesky(3183)
Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Short Stories by Margaret Lucke(3169)
The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk by Sudha Murty(3095)
The Daily Stoic by Holiday Ryan & Hanselman Stephen(3083)
Why I Write by George Orwell(2754)
The Social Psychology of Inequality by Unknown(2741)
Letters From a Stoic by Seneca(2658)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bryson Bill(2493)
Insomniac City by Bill Hayes(2381)
Feel Free by Zadie Smith(2374)
A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde(2336)
Upstream by Mary Oliver(2259)
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky(2156)
