Peter Rhodes on youth mobility, an epidemic of sadness and the demise of an old punctuation mark
According to a survey (however would we manage without those four words?), the semicolon is dying out.
Nearly 70 per cent of British students “never or rarely” use them while only 11 per cent describe themselves as “frequent users” of the punctuation mark, which is sometimes described as stronger than a comma but weaker than a full stop. Anyroad, if semicolons are becoming scarce, here's one you can cut out and keep ;
I can't recall ever being told, as a trainee reporter, how to use a semicolon. We were, however, urged never to use exclamation marks, a rule which dated from ye olden days when it took the printer an extra keystroke to make one. Another snag with exclamation marks is that you always think they will make people smile but they never do! See?
