Semicolon

In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, such as when restating the preceding idea with a different expression.

[4] In the QWERTY keyboard layout, the semicolon resides in the unshifted homerow beneath the little finger of the right hand and has become widely used in programming languages as a statement separator or terminator.

[5] In 1496,[a] the semicolon ; is attested in Pietro Bembo's book De Aetna [it] printed by Aldo Manuzio.

In particular, Manuzio motivates the need for punctuation (interpungō) to divide (distinguō) sentences and thereby make them understandable.

Here are four examples used in the book to illustrate this:[11][10]: 49 Publica, privata; sacra, profana; tua, aliena.

Etsi ea perturbatio est omnium rerum, ut suae quemque fortunae maxime paeniteat; nemoque sit, quin ubivis, quam ibi, ubi est, esse malit: tamen mihi dubium non est, quin hoc tempore bono viro, Romae esse, miserrimum sit.

[e] Although it is a universal confusion of affairs(,) such that everyone regrets their own fate above all others; and there is no one, who would not rather anywhere else in the world, than there, where he is, prefer to be: yet I have no doubt, at the present time for an honest man, to be in Rome, is the worst form of misery.

Around 1580, Henry Denham starts using the semicolon "with propriety" for English texts, and more widespread usage picks up in the next decades.

[10]: 52 [12] Around 1640,[f] in Ben Jonson's book The English Grammar, the character ; is described as "somewhat a longer breath" compared to the comma.

[14][g] In 1644, in Richard Hodges' The English Primrose, it is written:[16] At a comma, stop a little; [...] At a semi-colon, somewhat more; [...] At a colon, a little more than the former; [...] At a period, make a full stop; In 1762, in Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar, a parallel is drawn between punctuation marks and rest in music:[17] The Period is a pause in quantity or duration double of the Colon; the Colon is double of the Semicolon; and the Semicolon is double of the Comma.

In modern English orthography, the semicolon falls between terminal marks and the comma; its strength is equal to that of the colon.

For example, the first edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (1906) recommended placing the semicolon inside ending quotation marks.

In a list or sequence, if even one item needs its own internal comma, use of the semicolon as the separator throughout that list is justified, as shown by this example from the California Penal Code:A crime or public offense is an act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it, and to which is annexed, upon conviction, either of the following punishments: In Arabic, the semicolon is called fasila manqoota (Arabic: فاصلة منقوطة) which means literally "a dotted comma", and is written inverted ؛.

Church Slavonic with a question mark: гдѣ єсть рождeйсѧ царь їудeйскій; (Where is the one who is born king of the Jews?

– Matthew 2:1) Greek with a question mark: Τι είναι μια διασύνδεση; (What is an interpunct?)

In French, a semicolon (point-virgule, literally "dot-comma") is a separation between two full sentences, used where neither a colon nor a comma would be appropriate.

Lynne Truss stated: Samuel Beckett spliced his way merrily through such novels as Molloy and Malone Dies, thumbing his nose at the semicolon all the way.

[28]In response to Truss, Ben Macintyre, a columnist in The Times, wrote: Americans have long regarded the semi-colon with suspicion, as a genteel, self-conscious, neither-one-thing-nor-the other sort of punctuation mark, with neither the butchness of a full colon nor the flighty promiscuity of the comma.

Hemingway, Chandler, and Stephen King wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might).

Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons.

Today semicolons as terminators has largely won out, but this was a divisive issue in programming languages from the 1960s into the 1980s.

"[39] The study has been criticized as flawed by proponents of semicolon as a separator,[40] due to participants being familiar with a semicolon-as-terminator language and unrealistically strict grammar.

The last major use of the comma, semicolon, and period hierarchy is in Erlang (1986), where commas separate expressions; semicolons separate clauses, both for control flow and for function clauses; and periods terminate statements, such as function definitions or module attributes, not the entire program.

Drawbacks of having multiple different separators or terminators (compared to a single terminator and single grouping, as in semicolon-and-braces) include mental overhead in selecting punctuation, and overhead in rearranging code, as this requires not only moving lines around, but also updating the punctuation.

[47] In some cases the distinction between a separator and a terminator is strong, such as early versions of Pascal, where a final semicolon yields a syntax error.

For example, a blank statement (a semicolon by itself) stands for a NOP in C/C++, which is useful in busy waiting synchronization loops.

In MATLAB and GNU Octave,[52] the semicolon can be used as a row separator when defining a vector or matrix (whereas a comma separates the columns within a row of a vector or matrix) or to execute a command silently, without displaying the resulting output value in the console.

[55] The semicolon is permitted in long filenames in the Microsoft Windows file systems NTFS and VFAT, but not in its short names.