To Be or Not To Be?: On the Fate of the Semicolon

If you're still reading this post after seeing its title, then you are clearly as geeky as I am. Or perhaps you are just searching for the answer to that age-old question, "When do I really use a semicolon?" Believe me, friend, I have been there. And so, apparently, has the vast majority of the literate world. As the usual classic grammar debates over series commas and hyphenation rage, the question of the use and usefulness of that colon/comma hybrid has come to a head. The French (who else?) are at the fore of this language argument, with one camp painting the point-virgule as antiquated punctuation, while another patriotic group insists that the semicolon was integral to the beauty of the work of Flaubert and Proust.

If you weren't already aware, the French people have been embroiled in language debates of this stripe since 1634, when the Académie Française was founded to protect the language from the encroachment of other tongues. Here in America, without the same love of linguistic purity, I fear that the semicolon might just sink silently into oblivion under the weight of the lingua franca. As a reader of books rarely from this (or even last!) century, I admit that I would miss the nuance and subtlety of this oft underestimated mark. Who could disagree with Millon de Montherlant when he states that "One immediately recognizes a man of judgment by the use he makes of the semicolon"? I guess one could always counter this claim by citing Vonnegut, who insisted that "All [semicolons] do is show that you've been to college."

Then again, he was an American.