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When one is an English teacher, one gets asked a lot of questions by all kinds of people about punctuation, and I get asked most often for clarification on comma use, but I get asked almost as frequently about the use of the semi-colon. It can be a baffling punctuation mark, but only because people don’t use it enough. Today, I’ll focus on one use of the semi-colon, with more to come in the near future.

You know how a semi-colon looks like a period floating above a comma? That’s what a semi-colon is used for! It works like a comma, but it’s also like a period, and chances are very good that in your own writing, you’ve often used a comma when a semi-colon was called for. Take a look at these examples:

Please don’t feed the animals, they’re on a special diet.

Give it to me, I’ll put it away.

I told her not to try it, however, she tried it anyway.

In each of these examples, the comma separates two complete sentences. If you put a period there and capitalized the next word, you’d be grammatically correct. However, there are many times when a period seems too final or too abrupt. We want the thought of the second sentence to be linked quickly and smoothly to the thought before. In times like these, we use a semi-colon.

Please don’t feed the animals; they’re on a special diet.

Give it to me; I’ll put it away.

I told her not to try it; however, she tried it anyway.

You could go your whole life without using a semi-colon and never be wrong! Please understand that the decision to use a semi-colon is almost always a STYLISTIC decision. A semi-colon is not like a question mark or period, which MUST be used in certain situations. In the examples above, you could also just use a period, and in some cases, you can leave the comma and just add a conjunction. These sentences are also grammatically correct and avoid use of the semi-colon:

Please don’t feed the animals. They’re on a special diet.

Give it to me, and I’ll put it away.

I told her not to try it, but she tried it anyway.

You absolutely cannot leave the sentences as they are originally written! Two complete sentences joined only by a comma is a HUGE no-no, yet it is one of the errors I most often see in others’ writing. Practice using it and you’ll find that there are times when it’s exactly the right punctuation for your needs!

Posted in punctuation

Today…I want to talk about…the use of ellipses…

There is one very, very good reason to use ellipses, which are usually represented as three periods.  Use them to indicate that you have removed something from a quote.  Sometimes, you want to remove some of the words in the middle of a quote only to focus on the part that’s relevant to your point.   Use … to replace the words you’ve taken out:

“Mary had a little lamb … and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”

Many people use … to indicate a train of thought, a pause, or the inability to end one thought and begin a new one.  Don’t do this.  Even in your informal writing, such as in an online journal or a discussion forum, you will sound a million times more intelligent if you simply never use the ellipses! Instead, end one sentence and begin the next.

In formal writing, it’s a good idea never, ever to use … except to indicate removed text.  My advice is to give yourself perhaps three uses for your whole life, beginning today.  Once you use up your three, forbid yourself to use them ever again!  Hopefully, this will at the very least help you be more judicious in your use of the three dots.

Posted in punctuation

The hyphen is my second-favorite punctuation mark (behind the semicolon), and like my friend Blaine, I tend to overuse it and must always keep an eye out for it when I’m editing my own work. In a world that doesn’t use hyphens enough, I’ve overcompensated by using them too often.

At Blaine’s request, I’ll explore the hyphen and its many uses and misuses, beginning with what I consider its most important function: The connection of words in compound modifiers. A compound modifier is what you call two or more words that, together, describe one other word. Take the title of this post as an example:

I am an Asian American reading an Asian-American magazine.

In the first part of the sentence, Asian is describing American. I am an American. What kind of American am I? I am an Asian American.

In the second part of the sentence, the word magazine is being described by two words together, Asian and American. Look what happens when we leave the hyphen out:

…reading an Asian American magazine.

without the hyphen, it’s hard to tell whether the magazine is a magazine for Asian Americans or an American magazine published somewhere in Asia. Here are two more examples:

Kari Wuhrer battles Eight Legged Freaks in a 2002 action film.

National Novel Writing Month takes place every November.

These two examples appear here as they are officially titled, but both are wrong! In the first example, does lovely Kari fight eight freaks that have legs, or does she fight freaks that have eight legs each? In the second, is November the new month for writing, is it the month for writing the national novel, or is it the national month for writing novels? With hyphens, we have Eight-Legged Freaks and National Novel-Writing Month and everything is much clearer!

Posted in punctuation