In Praise of Punctuation

I understand the frustration over grammar and punctuation. I loved diagramming sentences in elementary school, and I probably would still do it for fun if someone made a colorful app with cool sounds, but I was also a weird kid. It’s possible I’m still a weird kid.

Those people who had better things to think about than punctuation probably still have more pressing things on their mind. In an age of auto-correct and grammar check, it’s unsurprising that something like semicolon usage is declining. Its purpose is not as common as the comma nor as clear-cut as the period or question mark, and most people probably never think about it at all.

I think about it, though. I’m a fan. I enjoy combining independent clauses without a conjunction. I get a little thrill when I turn unwieldy lists into something clear and reasonable. I appreciate the semicolon’s ambiguity, somewhere between a comma and a period in finality. So don’t worry about the semicolon and its future; as long as there are still punctuation fans like me, the semicolon will have a home