The Semicolon

Exercise 1. Comment on the use of semicolons in the following sentences.

1. Few children can eat, when excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I. 2. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. 3. Our circumstances were moderately comfortable; we lived in three tastefully furnished rooms. 4. Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed. (M. Twain) 5. When Brander suggested that she should wear a jacket, she hesitated a moment; then she went in and borrowed her mother’s cape, a plain grey woolen one. 6. He was wealthy; he wanted to take Jennie; he wanted to give them a good home. 7. He was restless and irritated; and finally, after three hours of meditation, he took a cab and returned to his apartment. 8. She was necessary to him; the longer he stayed away from her the more he wanted her. 9. “You’d better get the dinner,” he suggested, after a time, turning toward her irritably; but he did not feel so distant as he looked. 10. She was apparently too circumspect, too much the good wife and mother, too really nice to be angry with; but she had a past, and that had to be taken into consideration. 11. As for himself, he was saying that here was one solution that probably he would never accept; yet it was a solution. 12. He preferred to let matters rest for the time being; then a little later he would write her sanely and calmly of how things were going. 13. Jennie had no tears to shed; only a deep, insistent pain to feel. 14. She was not, I was told, in the hospital portion of the house with the fever patients; for her complaint was consumption, not typhus.

Exercise 2. Place semicolons where needed.

1. A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane, with a garden before it exquisitely neat, and brilliantly blooming. 2. The little Vesta was now eighteen months of age she was an interesting child her large, blue eyes and light hair giving promise of a comeliness which would closely approximate that of her mother. 3. I cut and raked the grass moreover, I weeded the lawn. 4. Sally finished typing the paper however, she forgot to bring it to class. 5. I once stabbed myself with a pencil a black mark has been under my skin ever since. 6. Sharon didn’t understand the teacher’s point therefore, she asked him to repeat it. 7. I arrived early to get a good seat however, there were already a hundred people outside the door. 8. Ted carefully combed and recombed his hair nevertheless his bald spot still showed. 9. I voted for the president two years ago I would not vote for him today. 10. If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties. (Francis Bacon)

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