semicolon

«semicolon» in Mova's school dictionary: the punctuation mark ; which joins two closely linked… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a semicolon, semicolons)

meaning for a pupil

1) A semicolon is the punctuation mark ; which joins two closely linked full sentences. tree →

2) A semicolon can also separate items in a long list when the items already contain commas. tree →

sense in the lessons

In grammar lessons (and UK SATs), pupils learn to use a semicolon between two main clauses: «It was raining; we stayed in.» It is stronger than a comma but weaker than a full stop. In computer coding, many languages end each line with a semicolon.

examples

• It was late; we went home. tree →
• A semicolon looks like a dot on top of a comma. tree →
• Use a semicolon to join two related sentences. tree →
• We visited Paris, France; Rome, Italy; and Dublin, Ireland. tree →
• In some code you must end each line with a semicolon. tree →
• I love reading; my brother loves football. tree →

note

Do not use a semicolon before «and/but» joining short clauses, and do not use it to start a list (that's a colon :). Both sides of a semicolon should usually be full sentences.

In the corpora

• A semicolon joins two complete sentences that are closely related: "It rained; we stayed in."
• A semicolon can join two full sentences that are closely linked: "It was raining; we stayed in."
• If one side of a semicolon could not stand alone as a sentence, the semicolon is wrong there.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «semicolon» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.