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I quite entertained the same point of view of the author about semicolons. The best use of them is when they're used sparingly, hence carrying more precise weight and meaning.

Now there is something quite peculiar about that punctuation mark's naming, which has some dissonant trait of causality (what colons are used for), and always found the French name "point-virgule" (period-comma) much more apt.

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The naming fits if you think about the implications of the mark on the flow of a sentence. A colon is a pretty hard stop when I read, while a comma is barely a pause. A semicolon is in between the two; you don't stop as long as the colon, but you pause a little longer than a comma (did I use it correctly? ;P )

Is there any chance you're mistaking a "colon" for a full stop (period)?

My precedence order is (!|.|?) > : > ; > ,

I pause longer for colons than for periods. Colons are less common and often join what are really two sentences, meaning something like "read this sentence in the context of what was said in the first."

It took a few moments to realize you mean:

To me, exclamation mark, full stop and question mark are of equal precedence; they are higher than colon, which is higher than semi-colon, and that is higher than comma.

Sorry, I didn't provide a parser for my syntax :P

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