Ask LLOG: Semicolons used as commas?
« previous post | next post »
From Josh E.:
I am a big fan of your posts on the Language Log and was wondering whether you often see semicolons used the way we might normally use commas to set off a dependent clause. Here is an example I just saw:
A Massachusetts family is demanding a full investigation after a state police recruit died after being injured during a training exercise late last week at the Massachusetts State Police Academy.
Police said Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, of Worcester was injured and became unresponsive during a training exercise Thursday on defensive tactics. He died the next day. […]
McGhee said he put about 400 to 500 recruits through the program without issue, and noted the academy has since trained thousands.
“While this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened; injuries to this level are very rare,” he said.
When I started teaching a decade ago, I rarely saw this issue. Now, I see it all the time in both undergraduate and professionally published writing. Is there a term for this kind of flattening of punctuation distinctions? Or would Geoff Pullum put me up there with Strunk and White as being wrong in my basic understanding?
FWIW, I'd be surprised if Geoff defended that semicolon.
I don't share the impression that similar errors have become more common, but that may be related to my acknowledged status as the World's Worst Proofreader…
What do the rest of you think?
We should note that the cited semicolons might be an editing error, rather than a reflection of the writer's punctuation preferences…
Some past posts with a connection to semicolons, though mostly not relevant to this question:
"Jane Austen: missing the points", 11/17/2010
"Death before syntax?", 10/20/2014
"More on grammar, punctuation, and prosody", 12/19/2017
"Peeving and breeding", 3/4/2018
"Barstool punctuation", 4/4/2020
"Trends", 3/27/2022
Stephen Goranson said,
September 18, 2024 @ 10:10 am
One punctuation option:
"While this is a tragedy–and it never should have happened–injuries to this level are very rare,” he said.
Scott Weller said,
September 18, 2024 @ 10:37 am
I very much like Stephen Goranson's version. . But surely first sentence of the second paragraph would read more smoothly if "during a training exercise Thursday on defensive tactics" was instead "Thursday during a training exercise on defensive tactics".
J.W. Brewer said,
September 18, 2024 @ 10:37 am
It sounds like some of the other quotations in the story may be from written statements that were given to the newspaper but this one sounds more likely to have come from an oral interview of Mr. McGhee, meaning that it's not Mr. McGhee's choice of punctuation but that of the reporter and/or the reporter's editors. Although of course these days sometimes what seem like they were "oral interviews" by a reporter were actually exchanges with the interviewee via email or text-messaging so maybe I shouldn't be so sure about that.
Jenny Chu said,
September 18, 2024 @ 10:56 am
I am quite certain that this is a result of the overall trend towards dispensing with copy editors. Everyone makes careless mistakes when transcribing an interview or typing up notes. But when there was a copy editor ready to catch such mistakes, they rarely made it to the reader. Now that copy editors have become so rare, the typos show up in what we read as well as what was originally written.
Jonathan Lundell said,
September 18, 2024 @ 11:24 am
It feels like an editing confusion, perhaps by the author, perhaps involving a rewording?
“This is a tragedy, and it never should have happened; injuries to this level are very rare,” he said.
Hector said,
September 18, 2024 @ 11:27 am
I was expecting the issue to be semicolons used as list separators, as in: "They had experienced several shocking losses: his father, to cancer; her sister, who drowned; and their only child, in a car accident." Sometimes (as perhaps in my example) this seems fine, but sometimes I find it jarring. I see online the suggestion that it's okay just when list items contain commas, but I think that's probably too simple.
Julian Hook said,
September 18, 2024 @ 12:53 pm
My reaction was similar to Jonathan Lundell's. The quoted sentence would be fine with the semicolon but without the initial "while"; alternatively, you could omit the "and" (but that version wouldn't make as much sense). Perhaps by the time the writer got to the middle of the sentence, they forgot how it started.
Dagon said,
September 18, 2024 @ 1:08 pm
I personally overuse semicolons, very often when I can't decide just how independent the clause is – I should probably choose a comma or a period, rather than both.
I presume this is already required listening on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M94ii6MVilw
Geoff Pullum said,
September 18, 2024 @ 1:08 pm
The semicolon spotted by Josh E. is crashingly ungrammatical. I think (and hope) that pages 157-158 of The Truth About English Grammar provide a clear explanation of why.
Daniel Barkalow said,
September 18, 2024 @ 3:56 pm
My guess, on the same general lines as Jonathan Lundell and Julian Hook: It was written (from audio) as "While this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened, injuries to this level are very rare", but someone editing it overlooked the "While" and thought it said "This is a tragedy, and it never should have happened, injuries to this level are very rare". If this had been the correct words in the quotation, it would be a fine statement by the speaker, but the newspaper should punctuate it with a semicolon to present it in the standard way. Therefore, the editor changed it, and still didn't notice the word at the beginning.
I'd imagine that reporters often get comma splices when transcribing speech and commonly go back to correct it, so this would be a routine modification to make to the very similar text where it is correct.
Dave B said,
September 18, 2024 @ 4:23 pm
Is it a thing to distinguish between comma and semicolon not based on grammatical rules, but rather on the length of the pause in the speech?
Brian said,
September 18, 2024 @ 5:35 pm
I fully agree with Jenny Chu (that this case is almost certainly an arrtifact of a lack of copyediting). That said, I myself haven't seen an increase in the use of semicolons being used as commas. If anything, I would say that the 20th-century trend of ignoring the semicolon entirely continues.
If this example is in fact a transcription of spoken remarks, then Stephen Goranson's version is likely the superior one. However, I almost never see paired em-dashes used in transcriptions of speech these days. I suspect that (to readers) they are suggestive of prepared remarks, and feel out of place in spontaneous speech.
JPL said,
September 18, 2024 @ 6:06 pm
Not mentioned yet: "While this is a tragedy and never should have happened, injuries to [?[ this level are very rare." Elimination of the first comma (and the "it") might have obviated resort to the semicolon. @Stephen Goranson: That set-off bit looks like it wants to be parenthetical, but it needn't be; a conjoined predicate would suffice. (The semicolon is not used to separate dependent clause from main clause; what's inside the semicolon has to be a possible independent clause.) (I hope I got that right.)
ohwilleke said,
September 18, 2024 @ 6:13 pm
A semicolon is appropriated if the portions of the sentence can stand on their own as complete sentences. So, in this example, I think that using a semicolon is appropriate.
JPL said,
September 18, 2024 @ 6:19 pm
@ohwilleke:
But "While this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened" can't "stand on its own as a complete sentence".
AnthonyB said,
September 18, 2024 @ 9:24 pm
The only book on punctuation I find worthwhile is Geoffrey Nunberg's "The Linguistics of Punctuation."
Viseguy said,
September 19, 2024 @ 1:14 am
If semicolons were a species, I'd call them endangered not invasive. Near extinction, in fact, in constructions such as "X; however, Y", "X; moreover, Y", and so forth.
Julian said,
September 19, 2024 @ 8:10 am
I had to check what Victor Borge would have said ….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TIf3IfHCoiE&pp=ygUYdmljdG9yIGJvcmdlIHB1bmN0dWF0aW9u
Robert Coren said,
September 19, 2024 @ 9:25 am
@Julian Hook: Indeed, at first reading I completely missed the "while", and thought "That's not a dependent clause, and there's nothing wrong with that semicolon." When I reread it I realized that without the "while" it didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Kendon said,
September 19, 2024 @ 10:49 am
Many colleges and universities in English-speaking North America have first-year writing classes that are required for all or most students, and a variety of textbook has developed to fit the perceived needs of these classes. These tend to be called (writing) handbooks, and many of them have titles of the form The [Publisher] Handbook (such as The DK Handbook, The Bedford Handbook, The Harbrace Handbook, The St. Martin’s Handbook, and so on). These handbooks cover all of the same content, so if one adds a new chapter or section, the others will generally do the same in their next editions. To be somewhat discrete about this rampant mutual plagiarism, there are attempts to rephrase this content. Thus, a rule that one textbook frames as “use semicolons to separate items in a series when one or more of the items contain commas” (much as Hector recognized) might be reframed as “use semicolons in place of commas when coordinated phrases or clauses already contain commas,” which then becomes (or perhaps gets misremembered as) “use semicolons in place of commas to set off phrases or clauses that already contain a comma.” Our dependent clause (“while this is a tragedy, and it never should have happened”) contains a comma, so an application of the mutated rule tells us that the comma used to set it off from the rest of the clause must be a semicolon instead. This explanation would also align with JPL’s observation that eliminating the first comma may have resulted in that semicolon being a comma instead.
adam said,
September 19, 2024 @ 2:57 pm
I can't say I've noticed this use of the semicolon before; what I have noticed in the wild, though (e.g. on webforums), is the use of periods after these longer while-clauses.
JPL said,
September 19, 2024 @ 4:52 pm
@Kendon:
Some further observations. While the "level of constituency" idea applies to a series of nominal phrases, such that, if a comma is used internal to the phrases, each whole phrase is set off with semicolons, the idea that the constituent (phrase or clause) whose final boundary is indicated with a semicolon must have the property of "wholeness" seems to take precedence, as in the following, where the constituents are clausal:
"While this is a tragedy, people were hurt and it never should have happened, injuries to this level are very rare."
The constituent "While … happened" does not have this property. (This question has come up before: What is this property of "wholeness", where does it come from and why doesn't this constituent have it? It's a fundamental question that can not be ignored.)
(BTW, another possible source for the flawed example sentence could be something like the above sentence, where perhaps editing removed the "people were hurt" conjunct, and left the example as a residue with the puzzling appearance of the "it", which maybe was there because the passivized second conjunct had a different subject from the third. Then somebody mistakenly applied the "level of constituency for nominals" idea.)
But I've seen neither Geoff Pullum's new book, nor, sadly, the CGEL, and I'm quite sure Geoff can give a much clearer, more accurate and complete account of this area than I can, so please check out his new book. Don't stop with this, which may not even be fully correct.
julian said,
September 19, 2024 @ 7:34 pm
@Kendon
Very interesting explanation.