Janet Haven

My Polish colleague Jerzy is one of those crushing European polyglots who make single-language Americans like me despair over our upbringing, education, and entirely unrigorous way of life. Jerzy effortlessly speaks Polish, Hungarian, and English. If you're at all into language families, you know that's not like being able to speak Italian, French, and Spanish. Polish, Hungarian, and English are, to put it mildly, way, way, different.

To lull me out of my despair, Jerzy occassionally asks my advice on the finer points of composing in English; mostly recently, he asked me when it was appropriate to use a semi-colon in a sentence. Since Americans of my age (33, if you must know) were not requried to study grammar (at least in California, I kid you not), I actually haven't the slightest idea what the official answer to that question is, and so waxed philosophical about semi-colons, linked sentences, the emotional qualities of punctucation, and so forth. Then I recommended Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, and slunk off to my office, embarassed at my loquaciousness on a topic that I don't actually know the answer to.

Today, the question came back to me, and I googled "When do you use a semi-colon?" The magic 8-ball gave me back this answer, which I thought was much more accurate than what I told Jerzy:

Q. When do you use a semicolon?
A. After you’ve attended grad school.

So, there you go. Sorry, Jerzy, I got it wrong.