We all more or less know where periods and commas, exclamation marks and question marks should go (unless you're like me who manages to somehow pack even an excerpt with commas).

I'm wondering where colons, semi-colons, and dashes go? I've used semi-colons a few times, but I'm not sure if I had used them correctly. Are they important to use? Or optional? Or are they optional only when not important?

I always thought that colons should be used when you're explaining something. So for example if I said 'It was a gorgeous, expensive bag: red and blue coloured, and dotted with black spots. Or maybe if I was listing something and said, Here is a list of what I wrote up: grammar, spelling, etc.

Now with a semi colon, I add it in where I want a pause, not long enough to use a full stop but also not short enough for a comma. For instance, 'I always had known that David had murdered her; I also knew it could never be proved.' It gives a more dramatic feel to it, I think. You're not breaking up the sentence with a full stop but you are giving a longer pause for a better effect. I have always used them, so I can't reply to your question as to are they optional, because I don't know.

First, I highly recommend finding, reading, and studying several good grammar textbooks, because a lot of people (probably including me, sigh) use commas (technically) incorrectly. There are places where commas are supposed to go where in idiomatic English people don't pause anymore, and (having lost those) people pause all over the place where there isn't any formal break, so you can't just put a comma in whenever you take a breath. Also, there are important rules about how the narrative introducing or surrounding dialogue should work, which necessarily involves periods and commas, that I've found (in my work with the Writing Circle here on Holy Worlds) people seem to have learned very little about when they were learning to write.

There are few places where colons are required; I use them somewhat instinctively, and while I"m fairly sure I'm generally correct in my usage, I couldn't explain why it's correct.

Semicolons connect two independent clauses. That is, what's on each side of the semicolon could be its own sentence, with the semicolon becoming a period instead, or you could replace the semicolon with a comma plus a conjunction like "and" or "but". The other place to use semicolons is delimiting lists where some of the items include commas. (For example: "The room held Jack, the janitor; Peter, the superintendent; and Mary, the children's mother.")

Dashes are somewhat tricky. (Not least because there's at least two kinds of them.) Again, consult a reference book. I use them in much the same way I do ellipses, to represent a sentence being forcefully broken off (usually by someone interrupting) while I usually use an ellipsis (that's "..." or ". . .", which in nonfiction is used when you're quoting somebody and you omit some extraneous text from the quotation) to represent a sentence trailing off into silence. I also often use dashes for parenthetical comments---like this one, for example---instead of using parentheses.

And above all, in dialogue or first-person narrative, if punctuation makes something sound right (and I mean really, not just to your ear---ask several grammatically-minded people to critique you) but isn't quite technically correct, while correcting it makes the dialogue sound stilted or otherwise inferior, leave it "incorrect".

Another recommendation that'll make grammar in general much easier (though whether it'd worth the cost if that were the only benefit is doubtful): Learn (i.e. study) Latin, or at least some foreign language. There are some things in English that I'm not sure I ever knew, but I know I wouldn't have been able to begin to explain, if I hadn't taken Latin. (Even though I didn't pay enough attention in Latin class and have now forgotten far too much of it, only a few years later.)

Hope this helps ...

Thanks, Elanor and kingjon. That does help.

Are the two kinds of dashes similar in how to use them? Or are they basically the same?

For colons: I think I use them instinctively. I use them when introducing a list of objects, when I've introduced an object and I'm now stating what that object is (see the second sentence in dashes below), or when I'm expounding on an object (like in the first sentence of this paragraph). I'm not entirely sure if I use them correctly though.

For semi-colons: I don't use them enough. I have long been confused by semi-colons and just recently have started to force myself into using them. Lady Elanor and kingjon hit the proverbial nail on the head about their use. When you use two sentences instead of a semi-colon your writing can come out choppy, etc... because it doesn't have a short enough pause (though, of course, there are no real rules in writing and there are always exceptions to the rules).

For dashes: I use them instinctively and I'm fairly confident that I use them correctly. The two kinds of "dashes" being discussed go by different names: one is the hyphen, and the other is the real dash.

A hyphen is used when joining certain words together to make another word (example: son-in-law) and when splitting up a word at the pronunciation conjunctions so... well... I've never really understood why people split up a word when it hits the edge of the page, but there must be a reason because it happens all the time in books.

A dash is used when placing emphasis on an parenthetical element and is often used to indicate that the person speaking is stuttering. When writing, a dash is slightly longer than a hyphen. When typing, a dash is two hyphens put together (some programs will automatically join two hyphens into a dash). One thing that has really helped me to distinguish between when to use parenthesis and when to use dashes is to ask myself how much importance I'm placing on the element I want to close off. If I want to place a lot of emphasis on what I'm cordoning off, I use dashes (I'd give an example, but for some reason my mind is drawing a blank right when I need it ). If I want to place minimal emphasis on what I'm cordoning off, I use parenthesis (example: look at any of the sets of parenthesis I use throughout this post).

I hope my monster post is helpful.

As far as those go, I think those uses are correct.


As I said already , when I said that there were "two kinds of dashes", I was omitting hyphens from my consideration entirely. Counting hyphens, there are three kinds of dashes. If you're working in plain (ASCII) text, as we are here (prior to the BBCode interpreter, anyway), a hyphen is one hyphen (-), an en-dash is two (--), and an em-dash is three (---). The difference between the proper usage of an en-dash and that of an em-dash might be defined by some rule, or it might be a trivium of interest only to typographers and Donald Knuth. I suspect the latter, but I don't know.

Your sumary of the usage of hyphens and dashes looks to be basically correct.

*Hugs her semi-colons *

Interesting. I've never heard of an em-dash.

*hugs his precious em-dashes* 'Course, there's en-dashes too but no one much more than typography freaks uses those

eru

What do you use em-dashes and en-dashes for?

An en-dash is a dash in a sentence--we usually substitute with two hyphens, although Microsoft Word will replace two hyphens with an en-dash.

An em-dash is equivalent to three hyphens, and it's most commonly used in lists:

--- Like this
--- and this

Again, Word usually automatically converts these

(I got confused earlier because in web design en-dashes are called em-dashes )