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Comment by metaxy2 | Hacker News Reader

Man, McCarthy's vendetta against semicolons makes sense in his hard-bitten Western prose, but does it really make sense to have zero semicolons in these nonfiction books? When used properly, semicolons reveal a layer of meaning that occurs in natural speech: when you have two sentences that are grammatically separate sentences but have a link in meaning or make a larger point together.

That said, I can't say I would turn down a free copyediting job by Cormac McCarthy even if I had to drop all my semicolons in exchange.

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Once you write enough you realize most of these all or nothing pronouncements on grammar and punctuation are more like personal vendettas and affectations. Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability.

Some people think all non-fiction writing has to abide by technical writing standards, but that's hogwash and pointless hardheadedness once you actually know how to write and use complex sentences to capture complex ideas well.

Ward Farnsworth says it well:

> A lapse from a supposed rule of style isn't an offense against nature. It's just a choice with consequences, and sometimes you want the consequences.

> Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability.

You are a member of an ever-smaller group of people who feel that way. https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-melancholy-decline-of-the-se...

> In 2017, author Ben Blatt discovered that semicolon use dropped by about 70% from 1800 to 2000. The ghosts of several authors are now rejoicing. Writers like George Orwell, who called semicolons “an unnecessary stop”. Or Edgar Allan Poe, who preferred the dash. Or Kurt Vonnegut, who famously advised against their use, saying “All they do is show you’ve been to college.” The symbol is facing the same melancholy fate as the dodo, the dinosaur, and the Soviet Union. Extinction.

This is to our disadvantage. Semicolons are useful because they allow for the long, patient, elaboration of complex ideas in a single sentence. In fiction, in particular, they can also function akin to a jumpcut in cinema, or like montage editing. Many of the incredible scenes in a book like Flaubert's Mme Bovary get their feel from the way he slams units of prose together with semicolons rather than the trudge of periods and short sentences. The same is true of Proust, or Nabokov, or Hemingway, who was way more profligate with semicolons than the meme-ish idea of his prose which has become popular (he was mocked for his use of them in The Sun Also Rises for example).

Unfortunate, really. Everything now is supposed to be distilled into these short and clippy sentences and paragraphs. Like newspaper prose. Modern prose fiction is often so anodyne and lifeless; a semicolon, with the freedom to smash things together in fun ways, would do most some good.

Maybe "endangerment" is more fair, given that it's still massively popular compared to, say, the interrobang.

Also note that two of the three authors cited are known for their bare-bones, economical prose styles; not exactly a cross-section of the literary world. (Poe is debatable--he was probably economical for a 19th century romantic, but not in absolute terms.)

> Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability.

They can, but not all prose needs to rely on them. Indeed, the quoted semicolon could easily be swapped for a period with no loss. In such a case it serves more as ornamentation than semantics.

I've noticed that high-performing people often develop idiosyncrasies that shape how they do what they do. I wouldn't use McCarthy's rules about semicolons as a general rule for any writer except maybe as an exercise. Constraints breed creativity. I think the number of successful writers who do use semicolons validates their usefulness. But I would also argue that somehow McCarthy figured out that ditching them was part of what allowed him to write as well as he did.

McCarthy also was averse to apostrophes and quotation marks. I remember when I had my first iPhone thinking that Cormac McCarthy would hate how it turned dont into don’t.

I've done a lot of writing in the past decade and I can honestly say I've never felt the need for a semicolon. I think writers overestimate the finality of a period. If one sentence follows another, readers will understand the implicit connection between them. After all, you put them next to each other.

It's also Kurt Vonnegut's rule, for what it's worth.

I think the problem with semicolons is twofold:

1. It allows you to write these horrible long sentences (that thankfully nobody does anymore, but if you look at like a Dickens novel they are everywhere).

2. They're a sort of mark of sophistication and wordiness, probably for reason (1), and it's very much the mainstream of the US tradition to reject that.

For all their desperation for simplicity, I don't actually think US novelists are particularly simple writers - Cormac McCarthy is kinda purple a lot of the time. So my feeling is just wanting to get away from wrought sentences and superficial sophistication isn't really worth anything in itself - it just brings you to a different manner of expressing sophistication.

As a copyeditor myself, who works in academia, I have to say that such 'rules' usually only work for the people applying them to their own work, but that doesn't mean they have no value. Why do it? It clearly provides a kind of discipline that makes you consider what's necessary for clarity. Do these two parts of a sentence really need to be together, or can they be separate? For technical or academic writers who may have difficulty expressing themselves clearly, a little artificial restraint could help.

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