this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2025
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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Basically you use them at points where you'd usually put a period, but you don't want to add as much of a pause.

ETA:

For example

My wife said she would like tea; coffee would have been my choice.

could also be written as

My wife said she would like tea. Coffee would have been my choice.

but it wouldn't sound as nice.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

While that may be true, you also put them in places that should have a comma, but you want more pause; this is why boiling it down to a single aphorism is difficult.

For example, I've read most of the comments in this thread, as well as the Oatmeal info-comic that someone linked, and I still don't know with certainty the semicolon I used above is grammatically appropriate.