Avoid using semi-colons in fiction. Break the sentence into two instead.
Nah, dude. Nah.
If you think you should avoid using semicolons, then you don’t know how to use semicolons. Let me help you with that.
- Punctuation Made Simple: The Semicolon
- GrammarGirl: Semicolons
- Punctuation: The Semicolon
- The Guide to Grammar and Writing: The Semicolon
- Virtual Salt: Using Semicolons
- Writer’s Relief: Three Essential Semicolon Rules
- GrammarBook: Semicolon
- Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab: Commas vs. Semicolons in Compound Sentences
- Writer’s Web: Using Semicolons
- The Week: In defense of the semicolon
- Grammar-Monster: Merge Two Sentences with a Semicolon
- The Writer’s Handbook: Using Semicolons
- Instead of Comma Splices
-C
There is nothing wrong with the use of the semicolon; frankly, it drives me nuts when I see advice to excise them on principle. It’s like the “rule” not to begin a sentence with and or but - rules that were drummed into students because most didn’t know any better than to write sentence fragments, and then weren’t taught how to construct a sentence properly anyway.
If I ever get a tattoo, it is 90% likely to be a semicolon (and 10% likely to be an Oxford comma, but I haven’t figured out how to render that in ink yet).
people who hate semicolons are semiterrible people