Of all the punctuation marks, the semicolon is far from the most popular. It's fallen in usage since it's heyday in the 1800s. Why was it so big then, and what changed? It might be that folks today ...

Cecelia Watson, author of “Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.” Historian and philosopher of science. Faculty member in Bard College’s Language and Thinking program.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The questions begin: Can I use a semicolon here? Should it be a colon instead? What’s the rule again? Oh foot, I’ll just give up ...

When you’re learning to type, the first lesson is the home-row position — the keys where your fingers rest: a s d f j k l ;. Learning this, you might naturally assume that the semicolon is pretty ...

As punctuation marks go, the semicolon is often misunderstood and people may use it with hesitation. But according to Project Semicolon, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention, the symbol has a ...

Love or detest it, the semicolon is the most divisive punctuation mark of the modern era. Should we even care? "His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free." From the ...

Here’s a fun thing you can do with your writing: Take any two simple, clear sentences and use a semicolon to mush them into one. For example, imagine you have a paragraph with just two sentences. “The ...

Writers and editors don’t always agree; really, they don’t. There was a time, years ago, when I was an editor at the now defunct Times-Union that I made some changes — necessary, I’m sure — to a story ...

Surely the most maligned mark of punctuation among journalists is the semicolon. They fear it, avoid it, doubt their ability to use it correctly. It seems stodgy, archaic and academic, traits they are ...

It is a piece of punctuation that has divided writers and authors for centuries. Novelists including Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen have not shied away from using them, but that has not stopped ...