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00:04

Semicolons, a la Shmoop. Your best friend Lila loves Disney movies.

00:10

Her favorite is Beauty and the Beast; she loves the part where Gaston falls off the

00:14

castle. Okay, she's a little grim.

00:16

While it's perfectly okay for you to mention Lila's favorite Disney movie, and the reason

00:20

why she loves the film, in two separate sentences...

00:24

...feel free to bust out the semicolon here instead.

00:26

Believe it or not, the semicolon doesn't exist just so you can text a winking emoticon.

00:31

Nope... this punctuation mark serves to splice two shorter sentences that are closely related

00:38

to each other... together. Say you have a paragraph of short sentences.

00:43

"Mary hated her shoes. They were too small. They were also ugly. Her mom had bought them on sale."

00:49

Too many choppy sentences can be boring for the reader. The semicolon allows you to spice

00:56

up your sentence structure, so you end up with...

00:58

..."Mary hated her shoes. They were too small -- semicolon -- they were also ugly.

01:04

Her mom had bought them on sale."

01:06

Your reader is less bored. Yay! Now make them clown shoes and you're really in business...

01:14

You also use a semicolon when you want to point out the relationship between two clauses.

01:18

Take these two sentences: "Jane's pants were too short" and "Everyone could see

01:24

her hairy ankles."

01:26

There's a clear relationship between these two sentences. So why not string them together

01:30

with a semicolon?

01:31

Then you end up with, "Jane's pants were too short -- semicolon -- everyone could

01:36

see her hairy ankles." You never use semicolons with coordinating

01:40

conjunctions like "and", "or", and "but"...

01:43

...with one exception.

01:44

For example, say you have the sentence, "Sara has a shrine to Twilight in her room, but

01:49

she hides it from her friends."

01:51

Here, the punctuation mark between "Twilight" and "but" needs to be a comma.

01:56

Now for the exception. Say your sentence is, "Lots of girls have Twilight shrines, including

02:02

Sara in Muleshoe, Texas -- semicolon -- Leslie in Stop, Arkansas -- semicolon -- and Linda

02:09

in Hellhole Palms, California."

02:12

Because you're listing girls with Twilight shrines in this sentence...

02:16

...and because commas are already being used to separate cities from states...

02:20

...semicolons are needed to separate each girl in the list from the others.

02:25

One instance where you always use a semicolon is when a conjunctive adverb is in play.

02:31

Conjunctive adverbs include words like "however", "therefore", and "indeed".

02:39

Say you have two sentences: "I put off writing my paper all week"...

02:42

...and, "Therefore, I will be pulling an all-nighter."

02:46

If you want to combine these two sentences into one, you'd insert a semicolon between

02:50

"week" and "therefore", and end up with...

02:53

..."I put off writing my paper all week -- semicolon -- therefore, I will be pulling

02:57

an all-nighter." If you're having trouble remembering that

03:00

coordinating conjunctions require commas...

03:03

...and conjunctive adverbs need semicolons...

03:05

...try this trick. Coordinating conjunctions are small words like "and", "or",

03:10

and "but"...

03:11

...and they need small commas.

03:15

Conjunctive adverbs are bigger words like "however", "therefore", and "indeed"...

03:20

...and they need the bigger semicolon. Anyway... we know Lila's your bestie and

03:26

all, but...might we recommend you get some new friends?

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