Semicolons have it rough. Some suggest they are rarely
necessary. Others insist they are never necessary. They have been characterized
as the refuge of hacks. One considerable indictment of semicolons is that
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t use them at all.
I admit to semicolon use. What I like about them is probably
the same thing their critics disdain: the projection of uncertainty,
of arguable timidity. On the left side of
the semicolon the writer can set up a thought, and on the right he or she may ruminate upon it further, but in seeming collusion with the reader. “Olaf missed the
midterm; the Maple Leafs were playing.”
They can be overused, but in addition to providing a fulcrum
for a setup and punch, they also offer a tool for controlling the
velocity of a complex sentence. If you were to break a complex idea into two
sentences, you’d have a hard stop with a period and at the end of one idea; but the
semicolon avoids that abruptness and lets you take your foot off the gas about halfway through the sentence. Kind of nice.
As to Cormac McCarthy, he doesn’t use quotation marks
either.
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