A semicolon (  ;  ) is a punctuation mark. The Italian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the practice of using the mark to separate words opposed in meaning and to mark off interdependent statements.^[1] The earliest general use of the semicolon in English was in 1591. Ben Jonson was the first notable writer from England to use them systematically. The term punctuation has two different linguistic meanings: in general, the act and the effect of punctuating, i. ... Aldus Manutius (1449/50 - February 6, 1515), the Latin form of Aldo Manuzio (born Teobaldo Mannucci) was the founder of the Aldine Press. ... For other uses, see Word (disambiguation). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Year 1591 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ... For other persons of the same name, see Ben Johnson (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ...

English usage

In English, the semicolon has two main purposes:

1. It binds two sentences more closely than they would be if separated by a full stop/period. It often replaces a conjunction such as and or but. Writers might consider this appropriate where they are trying to indicate a close relationship between two sentences, or a 'run-on' in meaning from one to the next; they might not want the connection to be broken by the abrupt use of a full stop.
2. It is used as a stronger division than a comma, to make meaning clear in a sentence where commas are being used for other purposes. A common example of this use is to separate the items of a list when some of the items themselves contain commas.

There are several cases where semicolons may be used: For other uses, see Comma. ...

1. Use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction: "I went to the pool; I was informed that it was closed."
2. Use a semicolon between independent clauses linked with a transitional phrase or conjunctive adverb: "I like to eat cows; however, they don't like to be eaten by me."
3. Use a semicolon between items in a series containing internal punctuation: "There are several Waffle Houses in Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Gainesville, Florida; and Mobile, Alabama."
4. A semicolon can be used to separate independent clauses that are joined by coordinating conjunctions when the clauses have internal commas that might lead to misreading: "After the game, I won a red beanie baby, four edible ingots, and a certificate of excellence; but when the storm came, I lost it all in a torrent of sleet, snow, and profanity."

Semicolons are always followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter begins a proper noun. In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. ... In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, phrases, or clauses together. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... The term punctuation has two different linguistic meanings: in general, the act and the effect of punctuating, i. ... Waffle House is a restaurant chain with 1500 stores found in twenty-five states in the United States. ... For other uses, see Comma. ... Minuscule, or lower case, is the smaller form (case) of letters (in the Roman alphabet: a, b, c, ...). Originally alphabets were written entirely in majuscule (capital) letters which were spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. ... A proper noun is a noun that picks out a unique entity. ...

Examples

1. I am alone; my wife left me.
2. I traveled to London, England; Tijuana, Mexico; and Reykjavík, Iceland.
3. Lisa scored 2,845,770 points; Marcia, 2,312,860; and Jeff, 1,726,640.

(The semicolons in the second sentence and the second semicolon in sentence 3 are acting as serial commas.) The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) is the comma used immediately before a grammatical conjunction (nearly always and or or; sometimes nor) that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items. ...

Other languages

In Greek and Church Slavonic, a semicolon indicates a question, similar to a Latin question mark. To indicate a major pause or separate sections each of which includes commas (the purposes served by semicolon in English), Greek uses an interpunct (·) or, actually, an ano teleia (·). This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The question mark(?) (also known as an interrogation point, query,[1] or eroteme) is a punctuation mark that replaces the full stop at the end of an interrogative sentence. ... An interpunct · is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language. ... An interpunct · is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language. ...

Example:

Με συγχωρείτε· πού είναι οι τουαλέτες; (Excuse me; where are the toilets?)

Computing usage

In computer programming, the semicolon is often used to separate multiple statements (for example, Pascal, SQL and Perl). In other languages, semicolons are required after every statement (such as in PHP, Java, and the C family). Other languages (for instance, some assembly languages and LISP dialects) use semicolons to mark the beginning of comments. In computer systems, the semicolon is represented by Unicode and ASCII character 59 or 0x3B. The EBCDIC semicolon character is 94 or 0x5E. “Programming” redirects here. ... A statement is the minimal unit of structuring in imperative programming languages. ... Pascal is a structured imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... SQL (IPA: or ), commonly expanded as Structured Query Language, is a computer language designed for the retrieval and management of data in relational database management systems, database schema creation and modification, and database object access control management. ... Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Perl Programming Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ... For other uses, see PHP (disambiguation). ... “Java language” redirects here. ... C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... See the terminology section, below, regarding inconsistent use of the terms assembly and assembler. ... “LISP” redirects here. ... An illustration of Java source code with prologue comments indicated in red and inline comments in green. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Image:ASCII fullsvg There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. ... EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is an 8-bit character encoding (code page) used on IBM mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, OS/390, VM and VSE, as well as IBM minicomputer operating systems like OS/400 and i5/OS. It is also employed on various non-IBM... In mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal, base-16, or simply hex, is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16, usually written using the symbols 0–9 and A–F, or a–f. ...

The semicolon is often used to separate elements of a string of text. For example, multiple e-mail addresses in the "To" field in some e-mail clients have to be delimited by a semicolon. Delimiters are marks which are used to seperate subfields of data. ...

In many cases semicolon is used as list separator, especially in cases where the decimal separator is comma. Often this may be seen in Microsoft Excel. Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It features calculation and graphing tools which, along with aggressive marketing, have made Excel one of the most popular microcomputer applications to date. ...

Example: 0,32; 3,14; 4,50 (instead 0.32, 3.14, 4.50)

Mathematics

In the argument list of a mathematical function , a semicolon may be used to separate variables and parameters. Graph of example function, The mathematical concept of a function expresses the intuitive idea of deterministic dependence between two quantities, one of which is viewed as primary (the independent variable, argument of the function, or its input) and the other as secondary (the value of the function, or output). A... The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. ...

In differential geometry, a semicolon preceding an index is used to indicate the covariant derivative of a function with respect to the coordinate associated with that index. In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with differentiable functions on differentiable manifolds. ... In mathematics, an index is a superscript or subscript to a symbol. ... In mathematics, the covariant derivative is a way of specifying a derivative along tangent vectors of a manifold. ... See Cartesian coordinate system or Coordinates (elementary mathematics) for a more elementary introduction to this topic. ...

References

• Hacker, Diana (2002). The Bedford Handbook (6th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's ISBN 0-312-41281-9.

External links

• History of the semicolon