What is the 'it'?

Recent media reports – no, I’m not going to link to any; it only encourages them – would have you believe that the semicolon is about to go the way of the dodo. But, to borrow the supposed words of Mark Twain, reports of its demise might be greatly exaggerated.

Admittedly, examples of bad semicolon usage far outweigh examples of good semicolon usage; but that doesn’t mean the semicolon should be fed into the wood chipper. We could, instead, just use it properly.

Like these rugged individuals, who are determined to prove the continued existence of the officially extinct moa, judges can play a valuable role in the survival of the semicolon.

There are two particular situations where the semicolon is undoubtedly the preferred item of punctuation. Luckily, the nature of judicial writing is such that it lends itself especially well to both of them.

As to the first, consider this sentence from Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic:

“At the same meeting, the Russians demanded that Ukraine withdraw from land that Ukraine controls; threatened to annex more provinces, something they have been trying and failing to do for three years; and insulted a member of the Ukrainian delegation, who lost a nephew in the fighting.”

I know, it’s not strictly legal writing, but it is the kind of sentence a judge might write: a list of things, some of which are of some length or complexity or, as here, themselves include a comma.

Imagine if each clause of that sentence could only be separated by commas; by halfway through, the reader would be totally lost. If semicolons didn’t exist, the sentence could not have been written in the way it was. I’m sure there is another way it could have been done, but I doubt it would be easier to read – or to write. And it would almost certainly be quite a bit longer.

The other situation that lends itself to a semicolon, and which is also particularly useful for judicial writing, is where two ideas, each of which is expressed as a full, grammatically complete statements, are so closely connected that it doesn’t feel right to set them as separate sentences. Dividing them with a semicolon allows them to work as two separate statements while at the same time tying the two statements together so that they are understood to be comprising one overarching idea. If you were watching closely, you might have noticed that I did this earlier:

“Imagine if each clause of that sentence could only be separated by commas; by halfway through, the reader would be totally lost.”

But this is not about me and how clever I am (not!). Rather, let’s look at three sentences drawn, some more loosely than others, from the recent High Court decision of Babet v The Commonwealth [2025] HCA 21:

“Indeed, there is no sharp dividing line that can be drawn between these two forms of implication; the one shades into the other.”

“The two elements were seen as two sides of the same coin; unless there was disclosure the whole point of public funding was destroyed.”

Both of these could have been written as two separate sentences. But they would have been the poorer for it – particularly if they were sandwiched between other sentences within a long judicial paragraph. The intended connection between the two thoughts would be weakened, if not lost entirely.

And then there is this one:

“The burden imposed on the quality of information provided to electors is not merely narrow; it is also shallow.”

As well as serving the same connective purpose as the other two examples, this one has also allowed the judge to break the formal structure of a “not only but also” statement and get away with it, while at the same time making it a better, more powerful sentence. Rewritten using an orthodox “not only but also” construction, it would have looked something like this:

“The burden imposed on the quality of information provided to electors is not merely narrow, but also shallow.”

Imagine if that was the only way the sentence could have been written. It ends like a tyre that has developed a slow leak: not with a bang but a whimper. How good is the semicolon?

I am going to go out on a limb here, and say that any use of a semicolon outside of these two very specific situations should be treated as suspect. Sometimes its (mis)use might be benign; but it might also be the kind of thing that has been contributing to the idea that the semicolon is now in the crosshairs. My experience of judicial writing over the years, for example, is that judges can have a tendency to deploy a semicolon where, on further analysis, the semicolon turns out to have the least utility of any of the available options.

Here is an entirely made-up sentence:

“The semicolon has a valuable role to play; whether you like it or not.”

This is no occasion for a semicolon. It just gets in the way. Many — perhaps even most — readers would have expected the second part of the sentence to continue, so that it formed a complete grammatical sentence of its own: “whether you like it or not, you are going to keep seeing them”, for example.

It is a sentence that would have worked perfectly well with a comma:

“The semicolon has a valuable role to play, whether you like it or not.”

Or even a dash, which might also have provided a modicum of flair:

“The semicolon has a valuable role to play – whether you like it or not.”

In other words, anything but a semicolon.

The moa might, after all, be gone for good. But, if used sparingly and wisely, the semicolon might still be there for us the next time we reach for it.