The big moustached truck driver drove past my house ; he had big hairy knuckles.
What was scarier — the truck driver, or the semi colon?
Most commonly, semicolons separate two main clauses that are closely related to each other. In the above example, the semicolon was used because the big moustache and the hairy knuckles belonged to the same truck driver.
Semicolons can separate items in a complex list too.
For example:The conference has people who have come from Moscow, Idaho; Springfield, California; Alamo, Tennessee; and other places as well.
Each item in the list requires a comma to separate the city from the state, and so without the semicolons the list would be hopeless!
Another use of a semicolon is before such words and terms as namely, however, therefore, that is and so on, when they introduce a complete sentence.
For example: The rainfall this year was abundant; therefore, the crops will be plentiful.
That’s the period atop the comma for you! Semicolons, all the way!
