The Semi-Colon: Misused and Misunderstood

I do a lot of critiquing and beta reading, and something I keep coming across is the incorrect use of semi-colons.

You know, this thing:

;

The semi-colon is among the least-common of punctuation marks, so it's not really a surprise that it's so often misused. And when something is a little bit rare, sometimes that leads to people wanting to use it more to look fancy.

Semi-colons are used to join related, but independent sentences. That is, you can't use it like this:

The house on the corner was enormous; with white shutters.

Or like this:

My hair stood up on end; as if I'd been electrocuted.

The sentences on either side of the semi-colon have to be complete sentences, with nouns, verbs, everything. If the sentences aren't complete, they could be joined by a comma, like so:

The house on the corner was enormous, with white shutters.

Or sometimes there doesn't have to be any punctuation:

My hair stood up on end as if I'd been electrocuted.

You can use a semi-colon to join two related, complete sentences, like this:

He looked at me with sad eyes; I wished I hadn't hurt him with what I'd said before.

But, even if you're using semi-colons correctly, I recommend using them very sparingly. They have a stiffer, more formal feel than other punctuation marks, and overusing them doesn't make you look smart: it just makes you look like you're a little kid who's discovered a new word and uses it all the time. Consider the voice and tone of what you're writing and whether or not a semi-colon fits in. For instance, a third-person narrator is more likely to use a semi-colon than a first-person narrator. I don't know about you, but I sure don't think in semi-colons!

I recommend scrutinizing your every use of a semi-colon, and making sure that it's 1) correctly used, 2) absolutely necessary, and 3) not surrounded by other semi-colons.