Punctul-și-virgula

Abstract

This article is a proposal to standardize a punctuation mark – the semicolon –, and describe the situations of use and the communication implications of the sign: prosodic, pragma-semantic and stylistic functions. The relationships between the semicolon and other punctuation marks, as well as recommendations for use in writing practice are also considered. Semicolon is less and less known and used nowadays; its use depends on the author’s preferences. Among the stylistic varieties, the semicolon is used most frequently in the scientific and argumentative style. It is recommended to use semicolon in enumerative series, especially vertically, in constructions containing parallelisms, or in long and complex statements that also contain other internal punctuation marks.