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The Current State of Affairs in a Tweet (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Semicolons can be used to list items that are more than just a word or two long, and may/may not contain commas. So if you're listing phrases contain commas, putting a comma between list entries would be confusing as fuck.

For example... I will list a few US capital cities, and their corresponding states: Albany, New York, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Sacramento, California, Houston, Texas...

Compare that to: Albany, New York; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Sacramento, California; Houston, Texas.

See? Much clearer.

I don't know if this person did it exactly correctly, and I'm not going to go back and read it again to check, but the idea itself is just fine.

Unless a lot has changed about semi-colons in the past 20 years.

Edit: I reluctantly went up to read it again, and it seems like the only thing missing would be a colon after "The combo of" and a comma before "really says it all"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I think the semicolons are correct too (though the colon you mentioned would add a lot of clarity). This grammar rule comes up infrequently enough that it can be jarring to encounter a semicolon before reaching the end of a properly formed independent clause.