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Is my usage of the colon in this sentence accurate?

Semi-colon usage

  • Semi-colon usage: "My name's John; I'm a carpenter and I enjoy repairing old homes and building new ones." Does that look and sound right to you? According to the 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon' it seems correct, but I would appreciate a second opinion.

  • Answer:

    That is correct. The two independent clauses are separated by the semicolon. You could also choose to use a full stop, but this conveys the relationship between the two clauses. Support your local semicolon, a misunderstood and tragically underused punctuation mark.

boosh at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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I once wrote a song called The Loneliness of the Semicolon that I am pretty sure answers your question: He's not quite a colon; he's not quite a period He's got a comma in him, and he's also got a dot What he is, he wishes he were not Sometimes he gets confused for an apostrophe from the line below He splits up sentences; he's half of what his brother Colon is Oh, the loneliness of the semicolon Spends his Friday nights all alone, bowlin; Never gets a strike, no, he never gets a spare All the other punctuation marks just sit around and stare Oh, the loneliness... of the semicolon's wife Wonderin', what she's doing', what she's doin' with her life? Spends all her time worryin' about her husband Sweeping all her dreams into the dustbin People always sayin', "hey, you winkin' at me?" he sas, "Can't you see? That theres so much more to me than simply winkin' at thee?" Oh, the loneliness of the semicolon Like a rock down a hill, he just keeps rollin' Splitting up clauses; avoiding awkward pauses Donating all of his spare time to charitable causes But deep down, we're all semicolons, can't you see? Just a lone hanging do with an apostrophe... From the line below.

ORthey

It's correct, but personally I'd have used a full stop in this instance. So would Hemingway.

le morte de bea arthur

Correct. Personally, I'd prefer "My name's John. I'm a carpenter; I enjoy repairing old homes and building new ones." The repeated 'and' sounds wonky to me.

CKmtl

If we're voting, I vote for full stop. Semicolons are addictive; you have to be careful.

HotToddy

A colon would also be correct there as both clauses are complete sentences. I guess it's strictly correct syntactically, but it really doesn't work with any of the functions of a colon (syntactical-deductive, syntactical-descriptive, appositive, segmental). Maybe the second, but not really.

The Michael The

I lurve semicolons; I am using a semicolon in this sentence just for the hell of it.

desuetude

The Guardian, as usual, has http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/04/france.britishidentity to say about this.

Neiltupper

"My name's John and I'm a carpenter; I really enjoy repairing old home and building new ones" sounds better to my ear. Balances the sentence so you have one "and" in each independent clause.

billysumday

One more vote for em-dash. Semicolons are as stiff as a 24-year-old mastiff.

Joseph Gurl

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