Semicrazed

Suzanna just showed me her notebook, the kind with a stiff, black and white marble cardboard cover that students often own. On the inside cover, there is a series of charts with basic educational information, like conversions between units of measure and brief descriptions of the parts of speech. Although these charts are printed with the aim of being useful, usually they go completely ignored. While bored, however, Suzanna had given the bottom portion about punctuation a brief perusal, and saw it fit to share the notebook's description of a semicolon with the resident English teacher.

"A semicolon indicates a greater pause than that which is indicated by a comma; and is often used between groups of words separated by commas."

During my first reading, I winced at the exceedingly poor description of the semicolon. Though there is a loose rule that readers should pause longer for semicolons than commas as a stylistic thing, this description gives no help in how or when to use a semicolon, to the point where it is misleading and people might use a semicolon when they want the reader to pause, an already disturbingly incorrect trend. The main function of a semicolon is separating two independent clauses, but perhaps that's too much to explain on a notebook cover. I'm not even sure what to make of it being used "between groups of words separated by commas." While semicolons can stand in for commas to separate objects/ideas in ordered lists where commas are serving other purposes, this description is so unspecific that I'm not sure if that's even the rule to which it's trying to refer.

The second reading, however, prompted me to laugh aloud. I don't know how I missed it the first time, but the explanation of a semicolon actually misuses a semicolon! Golly, that's terrific.

I googled the semicolon description to see if the notebook might have borrowed this information from another source. The only site I found perpetuating this crap is someone's shitty personal webpage. I know sites like this one are too easy of targets to spend time "critiquing," but I can't help it. My favorite tidbits are the ten worst foods to eat while driving, the fact that President Garfield was ambidextrous, and the four countries with more pigs than people. Cripes, anyone with access to clipart and a collection of email forwards feels they have something worth sharing with the world. Learn how to use a semicolon first, then we'll talk.