The most frequent use of the semi-colon is between two complete sentences. It can be substituted for a comma plus a conjunction. Ex: Tom ate breakfast with his family, and then he left for his trip.

Reading good prose should be like listening to a well-constructed piece of music: it should have rhythm; it should have cadences; in short, it should have style. In that sentence I have used the four ...

A colon is used to give emphasis, present dialogue, introduce lists or text, and clarify composition titles. Emphasis—Capitalize the first word after the colon only if it is a proper noun or the start ...

For writers at work, punctuation can slip from a matter of convention to one of obsession. I just finished my poetry thesis last week, and I’m embarrassed to admit the number of times I changed ...

If you use the wrong one, you can always claim it was a typo. | Dominique James/iStock via Getty Images Plus Despite what its name suggests, a semicolon isn’t exactly just half a colon—it has its own ...

The age-old semicolon is dying out as Britons admit to never or rarely using the punctuation mark, a study has found. In 19th century English literature it appeared once in every 205 words, but today ...