Terry Teachout tells use that George Orwell “claimed to have written an entire novel, Coming Up for Air, that contains no semicolons whatsoever. ‘I had decided about this time that the semicolon is an unnecessary stop and that I would write my next book without one’ . . .” If you care about that dimmed elusive punctuation mark, read this post.
I confess that though I have used semicolons I often don’t see a tangible difference between using it and using a period. Do two short sentences change the meaning or impact of your words from what they would be in one long sentence bifurcated by a semicolon?
Yes, I think they do. It’s a subtle distinction, and I can’t think of a way to explain it. One could certainly do without the semicolon. But I think we’d lose a nuance.
I frequently use the semi-colon. I like to think of it as a yield sign; maybe I want to make the reader down-shift, or change lanes. But what I really love is the long dash—