Semicolons in One-sentence Paragraphs

 

Here’s an argument I’ve gotten into a few times. I'm of the mind that there’s never a good reason to use a semicolon in a one-sentence paragraph. For example:

There are many reasons to visit the Valley this summer; it’s a fun place with lots to do.

To me, that should be two sentences:

There are many reasons to visit the Valley this summer. It’s a fun place with lots to do.

(A colon would be okay, too. But because the colon is more specialized, adding a deliberate emphasis to the second clause, we’ll set that option aside for now and just focus on the semicolon option and the two-sentence option.)

The semicolon has two jobs. It can indicate that two clauses are closely related. Or it can be used as a sort of uber comma to manage unwieldy lists, especially lists in which the individual items have their own commas: I visited Springfield, Illinois; Washington, D.C.; and Sacramento, California.

In our one-sentence paragraph, it’s doing that first job: showing that the clauses are closely related. But here’s the thing: The paragraph structure beat the semicolon to the punch. There are only two clauses in the whole paragraph, so it’s already clear that they’re closely related. The semicolon is redundant.

What’s worse – what’s always worse about semicolons – is they make sentences longer. What’s gained by making a simple, clear 10 word sentence and a simple, clear eight-word sentence into an 18-word sentence?

Even within a longer paragraph, this use of semicolons is usually a bad idea. In a three-sentence paragraph, two of the sentences are likely to be closer to each other than they are to the third. Any four-sentence paragraph you could divide into two simply by pairing the sentences up based on similarity. And so it goes. So regardless of paragraph length, all a semicolon really does is make neat, tight sentences into longer beasts, bringing no reader benefit in the process.

Repeat: no benefit to the reader.

That’s why I’m down on semicolons in general. But in a one-sentence paragraph, they’re even worse.

 

 

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