This lovely piece of punctuation is on its way out

The useful little chap is drowning, a victim of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome as the dash gains precedence.

Young people are ditching the semicolon in droves. Picture: istock

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The “useful little chap” is disappearing. Being phased out. Vanishing. To me this is extremely sad, an indicator of a grievous decline in standards. I use him a lot; in every column in fact; I’ve used him just now (times two.) He’s my helpful little valet who does the heavy lifting in every column. I’m talking, of course, of the playfully polite curve and dot that is the semicolon. Venetian born. 530 years young.

Abraham Lincoln had great respect for the semicolon. Picture: iStock

Abraham Lincoln declared of it, “I have a great respect for the semicolon; it is a very useful little chap.” It’s a small ahem in the meaning of a sentence; a courteous pointer to a new thought. The old-fashioned word for punctuation is “pointing”, and the semicolon points out, most helpfully, a change in a sentence’s direction. A little side-turn into wonder, perhaps. For the reader’s delectation. It feels intimate, personal, revelatory.

It’s particularly useful when replacing commas in sentences when too many rush upon each other, although I do love that style of prose also; thought tumbling upon thought, breathlessly. But ah, the comma; workhorse to the semicolon’s thoroughbred. And if the old-fashioned courtliness of my favourite thwarts AI, well, all the better for it. It’s as if it’s saying to the machines excuse me, the old-fashioned writer will prevail with their slow and considered thought, for their creative alchemy is worlds away from the bossy and abrupt monotone of your greedy, soulless tech age.

But young people are ditching the semicolon in droves. The little chap is drowning, a victim of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome as the dash gains precedence. I love both, but the semicolon is drifting to the bottom of the writerly toolbox. Ernest Hemingway wanted it banned from keyboards; Kurt Vonnegut said its only purpose was to show that you’ve been to college, and a new study suggests that not even uni graduates care for it anymore.

Virginia Woolf loved the semicolon.

Lisa McLendon, author of The Perfect English Grammar Workbook, recently found that 67 per cent of British students rarely or never use semicolons. She gave the 500,000-strong London Student Network a multiple-choice quiz on the semicolon, and found that more than half of those answering didn’t understand how to use it. Or know the point of it. In books written in English at the turn of the century, the semicolon appeared roughly once every 205 words. 25 years later, we’re down to once every 390. Its inventor, Renaissance printer Aldus Pius Manutius, intended it to prolong a pause – but even that function is being superseded by the dash. Which I also love deploying. To change things up. Cheekily. I play fast and loose with the grammar rules (and yes, am the bane of the old-school newspaper editor’s existence) but for me, whatever works in terms of rules-based prose. The punctuation isn’t the most important thing – it’s the rhythm of the piece. It’s always all about the musicality of the words on the page. Very subtle, but I’m slave to the rhythm with everything I write.

Jane Austen and Charles Dickens loved their semicolons, as did Virginia Woolf; Mrs Dalloway has more than 1,000. Salman Rushdie and Donna Tartt use on average 300 semicolons every 100,000 words. Cormac McCarthy used 42 in his debut novel, The Orchard Keeper, then ditched them as his writerly voice evolved – only one appears in his next nine books. Hilary Mantel penned perhaps the last word to the semicolon in A Place of Greater Safety.

She has a character who’s a famous writer of the French Revolution, and puts this delicious bon mot into his mouth: “I wonder why I ever bothered with sex. There’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.” Ah, my dear little chap, fading so very fast. I salute his loveliness, and lament.

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