Punctuation

The conventional system of marks used in writing in order to display, and clarify the structure of the text.

The principal punctuation marks used in writing English are the full stop, the question mark, the exclamation mark, the comma, the semicolon, the colon, quotation marks, the apostrophe, the hyphen and the dash.

Semicolon

Semicolons (;) are sometimes used instead of full stops, in cases where sentences are grammatically independent but the meaning is closely connected.

• Some people work best in the mornings; others do better in the evenings.
• Women’s conversation is cooperative; men’s is competitive.
• The Hobbit was published in 1937; the first volume of The Lord of the Rings followed in 1954.