A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman Page B

get rid of him. She wouldn't go through that again. The son had two years; after that, the locks were changed.
    This version feels more readable, less stylistically pronounced.
    The semicolons have lengthened some sentences and smoothed out the rhythm. They also provide sorely needed variety and contrast: instead of a cluster of only short sentences, they create a mix of long and short sentences, which enables each to stand out.
    • Semicolons can enable a longer and more complex thought to exist under one umbrella, thus offering readers the satisfaction of digesting a fuller thought at once. Readers used to have longer attention spans, and it was the norm to write in long, complex sentences. For today's readers, such a style would be tiresome, almost academic. Yet I do believe modern readers have the capacity, even the desire, to digest longer and more complex sentences, as long as they are conceptually and rhythmically sound, and offer the rest stops of semicolons. Mark Twain is known for his use of the semicolon; an example from his short story "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County":
    I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me.
    Using semicolons, Twain is able to convey considerably more material under the umbrella of a single sentence.
    • The semicolon can enhance word economy, since its appearance often allows surrounding words to be cut. For example:
    She couldn't dance in her favorite hall because it was under construction.
    She couldn't dance in her favorite hall; it was under construction.
    As John Trimble says in Writing with Style, "The semicolon is efficient: it allows you to eliminate most of those conjunctions or prepositions that are obligatory with the comma—words like whereas, because, for, or, but, while, and."
    Edgar Allan Poe used the semicolon often and with great skill. Consider this excerpt from his story "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall":
    His feet, of course, could not be seen at all. His hands were enormously large. His hair was gray, and collected into a queue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any kind there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head.
    The semicolons here are used well not only sentence to sentence but also in context of the paragraph. Poe begins with complete, simple sentences, using only commas and periods, as he describes the man's feet, hands, and hair. But as he switches to describing the man's face, he switches to semicolons. This is not by chance. The pace increases as he does, as if he's revving up in his description of this man, racing toward a conclusion. It enables us to take in this man's entire face at once, as one grand unit (as opposed to the feet, hands, and hair, which are given their own sentences).
    Here's another example, perhaps one of the most famous in literature. This comes from the opening paragraph of Melville's Moby-Dick. Melville relied heavily on the semicolon to create Moby-Dick, and there has been some debate over whether he used it properly or not. Some of his usages are certainly questionable. But this one is not:
    Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking