Is the semicolon an anachronism in writing? The New York Times has this discussion in an article on this little understood punctuation mark. Apparently it's not used very often these days because most people don't know how to use it. I happen to like the semicolon. I didn't really learn how to use it until I was in an English composition class in college and have used it ever since. I know there are many uses for it, but I learned to use a semicolon when you need something stronger than a comma in a sentence. I'm not sure if this is completely correct, but it's what I remember. I have noticed whenever I draft a document at work, any semicolons I used are usually removed. As the article states, it's not used in writing much anymore, but the internet made it popular in another way - ;-)
02/02/2008
