According to the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves [an excellent book, by the way, which I recommend to all who love the English language], the semicolon was first used by Aldus Manutius in the 15th century (illustration at left; image credit to Auburn University).Now, 500 years later, an article in Slate raises concerns about the imminent death of this punctuation mark: "A 1995 study tallying punctuation in period texts found a stunning drop in semicolon usage between the 18th and 19th centuries, from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7."
A steep drop in semicolon usage in the mid-19th century has been attributed to the advent of the telegraph - the "Victorian internet" - because punctuation marks were billed at the same rate as words. The 20th century has seen a shift toward more concise writing, culminating in the travesty of text messaging.
I'm a great fan of the semicolon (even though Kurt Vonnegut would say that all it shows is that I went to college), so before it disappears I'll offer this little tidbit from the 1737 guide Bibliotheca Technologica which explains how the semicolon is used to guide cadence during speech: "The comma (,) which stops the voice while you tell [count] one. The Semicolon (;) pauseth while you tell two. The Colon (:) while you tell three; and then period, or full stop (.) while you tell four."
Reposted from 2008 to add the observation that computers seem to hate semicolons:
Addendum: several readers have suggested that banning semicolons may help prevent malicious "code injection" into websites. Interesting.
I've noticed the trend in other modern authors, Cormac McCarthy even eschews apostrophes. The disuse of commas, colons, and semicolons makes for dull reading and deadly speech.
ReplyDeleteIn computer use, semicolons commonly end mathematical and command statements ("line separator") in programming languages. In "shell" languages (which consist mostly of commands), the semicolon is often used to separate commands on a single line, that is, they allow one to put multiple statements on a single line.
ReplyDeleteThis usage in computer languages started in about 1960 (perhaps earlier, but ALGOL60 is the first time I saw it; I do not know COBOL but I think it has significance iin that language, too). The problem comes when a program takes what the user typed and uses it directly, without thorough checking. A clever or nefarious user can "inject" actions into the database that cause problems; this requires a careless or naive programmer, but it happens often even today. One simple solution is to prohibit punctuation characters that cause the grief.
There is a cartoon from XKCD well-known in the computing business that highlights this problem.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/327:_Exploits_of_a_Mom
Be careful! We have shoveled and sprinkled salt. The driveway might be icy.
ReplyDeleteAs an ESL speaker, it always seems that American English favors shorter more to-the-point sentence structures, whereas British (Irish) English more favors long-winded sentence structures (Hello James Joyce). But even British English tends to be shorter than what Dutch and German are willing to stomach. As I'm getting older and don't feel the need to prove that I'm smart anymore, I tend to favor shorter and simpler writing. Because in the end, it's more clear. Nobody really understands what these 3-pages phrases really say. It's a nice tour-de-force, but it's just shit writing.
As for the ;, for me it's only useful in long summations when you need , within single elements of the summation.
They're going to take it away? And here I just started using it, trying to word my sentences so they have an opportunity to use this punctuation mark.
ReplyDeletep.s. Internet writers should switch from using the "em-dash" to "space em-dash space"; that would really emphasize the long pause that the "em-dash" is supposed to imply. The "em-dash" by itself seems to connect the letters before and after it; that makes up a new word that makes no sense.
i also like the semicolon, even though i rarely employ them myself. i’m usually opting for a dash instead (as a european, parenthetical or clause-linking dashes are en-dashes with spaces around them, of course). i also appreciate the poetry of using the semicolon as a symbol for a survived or avoided suicide attempt – with the explanation that a semicolon signifies the end of a sentence, but with a continuation.
ReplyDeleteregarding your text box problem: there are programming languages where statements need to be terminated with a semicolon, but those should have ways to deal with a semicolon in a text variable that don’t interfere with semicola in the code proper. but your hunch about safeguarding against submitted data interfering with internal program logic has substance – code injection is the term you want to look up for further info. it’s fickle business.
data correctness is another motivation behind such checks, usually for input that needs to conform to a specific format. think email addresses, phone numbers, postal codes, isbn numbers, credit card numbers, …
my guess, judging from the red error message below, is that somebody (a programmer, most likely) made an assessment what is reasonable to expect in submitted text, and allow only that. it can be a way to thwart code injection attempts, and is very easy to implement: you write a rule describing which characters an input is allowed to contain, test user input against it, and report the error message you posted if it fails that check.
the downside is that a lot (or at least smooth operation) rides on that assumption. my beloved dashes, for example, would also have made it fail (only hyphens allowed). if ‘letters’ is lazily implemented, it could mean a–z and A–Z, which would cause issues with ü, ø, æ, ł, and a host of other common characters once you consider languages other than english.
there exists a programmer joke for pretty much every apparently simple format that’s much harder to test for correctness once you check for hidden assumptions in your understanding of them. (date formats, phone number lengths, with/without country code prefixed, and then the number itself fitting that country’s local conventions…, email is notoriously more difficult to check for correctness than one would assume, even something as simple as assuming a single surname per person will stump a person from spain.)
raphael
I know that in Java, a semicolon is required at the end of most statements
ReplyDeleteFrom AI:
Clarity for the Compiler: The semicolon removes ambiguity for the computer, allowing it to correctly parse the code and know exactly where each distinct command ends.
Flexible Formatting: Because the semicolon, not a line break, defines the end of a statement, programmers can write a single statement across multiple lines or place multiple short statements on a single line. This flexibility aids in code organization and readability.
I love the semicolon; no doubt its usage is diminishing.
ReplyDelete> Perhaps [the semicolon] serves some function in computer language that would lead to glitches in text transmission.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I'm aware, it doesn't/shouldn't cause any such problems in transmission. The most likely culprit is that USPS set up their database in a way that leaves them open to SQL injection. SQL uses the semicolon as a statement terminator, so the DB would only see "Be careful;". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_injection
The ; (semicolon) is used in PLAGO; that programming language was developed at Brooklyn Poly as a simpler version of PL/1.
ReplyDeleteYes, badly written code can be susceptible to SQL injections, but it just requires fixing the code. There is absolutely NO reason why the text box should not accept every possible symbol someone can generate, including foreign letters And semicolons. It's just laziness on the part of the programmer or their managers. (I've got 45 years of programming experience)
ReplyDeleteI was sort of hoping you would have used a semicolon in your post (beyond the one parenthetical expression and the quoted citation)
> from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7
ReplyDeleteHow'd they discover this, a colonoscopy?
The power of the semicolon:
ReplyDeletehttps://xkcd.com/327/
I am often accused of being AI on reddit, as I frequently use semicolons and em-dashes. I roll my eyes as they write about being “weary” of scams, get payed every 2 weeks, and step on the breaks.
ReplyDeleteQ: What is the difference between twice one hundred and five, and twice one hundred, and ten?
ReplyDeleteA: A comma.
(seen in "The Puzzle King" (1899) by John Scott)