Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
A semicolon can be replaced with a coma or a period in most cases and the phrasing/meaning would still be correct.
|
Well, I would disagree about replacing semi-colons with commas; they are not the same and aren't interchangeable. There's a mental pause that comes with a semi-colon that does not with the comma. Generally speaking, if you elect to change a semi-colon to a comma, you need to add text to replace it as well.
With regard to periods, or full stops, while it might produce a result that is grammatically correct, it certainly would not be pleasant to the internal ear. Most of the examples provided in this lovely long thread of replacing a semi-colon with a period are perfectly grammatical, but they are choppy and unpleasant to the "reader's ear" in my head.
In my experience, while there was an intelligent discussion about the "evolution" of language in this thread leading to the purported demise of the semi-colon, the reality is that
today's readers can't parse complex sentences as easily as their forebears. I write FAQ and canned responses near-endlessly. I've finally had to resort to using a reading comprehension-checker (the military's version) so that I can repeatedly simplify FAQ Answers, explanations and the like, because once sentences become compound, people seem to just give up on them. (After fighting the inevitable for nearly two years, I gave up in 2011 and I now deliberately write FAQ's, etc., to a 6th-grade [11 years old, for folks outside the US] reading-comprehension level.
Eleven years old. Mind you: the people receiving and reading these instructions are authors and publishers.) And heaven forfend I use a semi-colon! Commas seem bad enough, but a semi-colon? The joining of clauses? Ye GODS.
Some may see this as the evolution of language, but I see it as devolution. It depresses me.
Hitch