PASSIONS AND THE SEMI-COLON.

PASSIONS AND THE SEMI-COLON. A lot of writers have a favorite punctuation mark. I worked with a lawyer whose favorite was the parenthesis and another whose favorite was the dash. My own favorite is the colon. Mary Jane’s is the semi-colon. Preferences are not necessarily passions. This wonderful article about the semi-colon by Paul Collins in Slate begins with a description of a duel fought in swords in 1837 in France over whether a colon or a semi-colon should be used in a particular point in a prose passage. The article by Collins led to a large number of responses from readers who are apparently passionate about the semi-colon. A surprising number of the responses said that they had been taught never to use the semi-colon.