Semicolon Quotes

What I want everyone to know is that the sun is going to rise tomorrow whether you want it to or not. Life is tragic, but it's also beautiful. ~ Project Semicolon

Call it precious and go to hell, but I believe a story can be wrecked by a faulty rhythm in a sentence - especially if it occurs toward the end - or a mistake in paragraphing, even punctuation. Henry James is the maestro of the semicolon. Hemingway is a first-rate paragrapher. From the point of view of ear, Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence. I don't mean to imply that I successfully practice what I preach. I try, that's all. ~ Truman Capote

I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. ~ Truman Capote

The stops point out, with truth, the time of pause
A sentence doth require at ev'ry clause.
t ev'ry comma, stop while one you count;
At semicolon, two is the amount;
A colon doth require the time of three;
The period four, as learned men agree. ~ Cecil B. Hartley

After four centuries, the semicolon has finally achieved it's true calling: helping people wink online. :-) ~ Abha Maryada Banerjee

Well, I am more partial to a semicolon myself. ~ C.S. Woolley

If the semicolon is one of the neglected children in the family of punctuation marks these days, told to stay in its room and entertain itself, because mummy and daddy are busy, the apostrophe is the abused victim. ~ John Humphrys

Jackson turned his left hand up and gazed down at the simple black tattoo on the inside of his wrist. He was silent for a long time, then looked up and met my eyes.
He said, "You're an avid reader. You know the meaning of semicolon."
I frowned. "It's when the author could have ended a sentence but chose not to."
"Exactly."
"I don't understand."
Jackson looked deep into my eyes. His smile might have been the saddest thing I'd ever seen. He said softly, "I'm the author, and the sentence is my life. ~ J.T. Geissinger

I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing! ~ Henry Miller

Most non-programmers don't think of plaintext like that. To them, text files feel like filling in tax forms for an angry robotic auditor that yells at them if they forget a single semicolon. ~ Robert Nystrom

We argued for weeks about the existence and then the location of a particular semicolon, ~ Julie Schumacher

I don't even know how to use a semicolon to this day; I use a comma every time. And you know what? If I email somebody and they get upset about me using a comma instead of a semicolon, that's not a person I want to work with anyway. And that's how you weed people out of your life. ~ Hannibal Buress

Academics love the semicolon; their hankering after logic demands a division which is more emphatic than a comma, but not quite as absolute a demarcation as a full stop. ~ Victor Klemperer

Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath. ~ Lewis Thomas

A semicolon is where a writer can choose to end the sentence," she said, tucking a lock of brown hair behind her ear. "But they don't. The story goes on. It's a symbol of hope. To keep going." She smiled tremulously. "Sometimes I need that reminder. ~ Emma Scott

He was impressed with his father's fiction and noticed certain stylistic tics that he shared, and figured it was genetic. Why would genes determine only physical traits, eye color and left-handedness? Why not other, more subtle, bodiless proclivities such as a love of the semicolon and a propensity to string modifying clauses ad infinitum? ~ David Duchovny

But what ultimately made Yates the scourge of copy editors was his simple aversion to criticism; any emendation in his manuscript, be it a single semicolon, would cause dark alcoholic brooding, which would finally erupt in long, hectoring, semicoherent phone calls. ~ Blake Bailey

Nora - Forgive me for copyediting, but it must be said - you have raped the semicolon yet again. Stop it. It wasn't asking for it no matter how it was dressed. If you don't know how to use punctuation then do away with it altogether, write like Faulkner and we'll pretend it's on purpose.
Bite me, Easton, Nora said to herself as she corrected her sexually compromised semicolon in chapter eighteen. Seriously, bite me. ~ Tiffany Reisz

A writer friend who was born in England summed up her feelings for the semicolon in a remark worthy of Henry James: "There is no pleasure so acute as that of a well-placed semicolon." I guess the opposite of that is that there is no displeasure so obtuse as that of an ill-placed semicolon. ~ Mary Norris

God is not an exclamation point. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called "human grace." Somewhere along the way, we've lost sight of this. ~ Eric Weiner

A comma ... catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table. ~ Pico Iyer

Human history is full of depressing things like colonization, disease, racism, sexism ... inventions of things which they had no idea how to handle (the atomic bomb, the Internet, the semicolon) ... And through it all there has always been some truly awful food. ~ Matt Haig

And another small point, or two actually; Aldus was the first to use the modern semicolon. ~ Mark Kurlansky

How hideous is the semicolon. ~ Samuel Beckett

Another day.
How long are you gonna scroll down?
Semicolon
Smile ~ Sanhita Baruah

Semicolon, you dolt! ~ Jean Shepherd

The semicolon is a much neglected beast ~ Randall McCutcheon

I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after 'semicolons,' and another one after 'now. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone! ~ Tom Conrad

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly. ~ Lynne Truss

I hear there are now Knightsbridge clinics offering semicolonic irrigation – but for many it may be too late. ~ Lynne Truss

The medals no-one will ever wear should be the ones that reflect the most. It's not an ending, it's not a period at the end of their lives, it's a semicolon. The story will continue to be told. ~ Jim Sheeler

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow. ~ Abraham Lincoln

THE WONDERS OF PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING 1 ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY ABOUT THE COMMA! 2 I BEFORE E COMPLETELY SORTED OUT! 3 THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMICOLON REVEALED!!! 4 SEE THE AMPERSAND! (SMALL EXTRA CHARGE) 5 FUN WITH BRACKETS! ** WILL ACCEPT VEGETABLES, EGGS, AND CLEAN USED CLOTHING ~ Terry Pratchett

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. ~ Alan Perlis

Semicolons ... signal, rather than shout, a relationship ... A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do." ~ George Will

If a period is a stop sign, then what kind of traffic flow is created by other marks? The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a "rolling stop"; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road. ~ Roy Peter Clark

the American essayist Lewis Thomas on the semicolon: The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added [ . . .] The period [or full stop] tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with the semicolon there you get a pleasant feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer. The Medusa and the Snail, 1979 ~ Lynne Truss

She had six months at most left to live. She had cancer, she hissed. A filthy growth eating her insides away. There was an operation, she'd been told. They took half your stomach out and fitted you up with a plastic bag. Better a semicolon than a full stop, some might say. ~ Helen Hodgman

Not long ago, I advertised for perverse rules of grammar, along the lines of "Remember to never split an infinitive" and "The passive voice should never be used." The notion of making a mistake while laying down rules ("Thimk," "We Never Make Misteaks") is highly unoriginal, and it turns out that English teachers have been circulating lists of fumblerules for years. As owner of the world's largest collection, and with thanks to scores of readers, let me pass along a bunch of these never-say-neverisms:

* Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
* Don't use no double negatives.
* Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.
* Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed.
* Do not put statements in the negative form.
* Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
* No sentence fragments.
* Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
* Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
* If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
* A writer must not shift your point of view.
* Eschew dialect, irregardless.
* And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
* Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!
* Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
* Writers should always hyphenate between ~ William Safire

Reagan Declares
Firmness on Gulf;
Plans are Unclear
Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm! ~ John Irving

I love you like a semicolon; a half-pause in a torrent of thought during which life stutters into being. I want to take you in the breathless spaces between ellipses where passion builds and shudders into a trailing afterthought. ~ Ophaelia Automn

So the fire and its subsequent flood, wich destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors'problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story. ~ Terry Pratchett