He travelled a long, long way.
Dean Alford, in "The Queen's English," says that this mode of pointing such expressions as "the wide wide world," "the deep deep sea," makes them absolute nonsense. The suggestion of a pause seems to us to bring out more effectively the intensive force of the repetition. And we doubt whether Dean Alford himself would have omitted the comma in our first example.
THE SEMICOLON
XXI. The semicolon is the point usually employed to separate parts of a sentence between which there is a very distinct break, but which are too intimately connected to be made separate sentences.
The patient dates his pleasure from the day when he feels that his cure has begun; and, perhaps, the day of his perfect re-establishment does not yield him pleasure so great.
The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; no one has so deeply meditated on the subject; no one is so sincerely interested in the event.
Not one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general right to choose our own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to form a government for ourselves.
The semicolon is used in enumerations, as in the last example, in order to keep the parts more distinctly separate.