Ya, the French had briefly attempted to frame it!
The semicolon is alarmingly disappearing and it now looks like a needless and archaic punctuation. It almost seems like a relic, a burden, a needless speedbreaker that has managed to stick around somehow and whose upkeep is solely the responsibility of the fading pre-Internet generations.
How often have I used the semicolon in my blog? Rarely. The way I see it, the comma and semicolon act like a 2-tier speedchecker or segregator of ideas…a technically correct approach towards lucid communication. However, with the emphasis now being on shorter sentences that don’t really call for a sound knowledge of English grammar, the semicolon has been a conspicuous casualty.
I’ll do my bit in preserving the endangered semicolon.
;-)
Comments
may be from written english, but definitely not in totality ;)