Breathe it, exult in it,
All the day long,
Glide in it, leap in it,
Thrill it with song.
12. Short quotations should be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma.
"There must be a beaver dam here," he called.
13. The omissions of important words in a sentence should be indicated by commas.
If you can, come to-morrow; if not, come next week.
+6. Rules for the Use of the Semicolon.+—1. When the members of a compound sentence are long or are not closely connected, semicolons should be used to separate them.
Webster could address a bench of judges; Everett could charm a college; Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a senate, and Tom Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand; but no one of these men could do more than this one thing.
—Wendell Phillips.
We might as well decide the question now; for we shall surely be
obliged to soon.
2. When the members of a compound sentence themselves contain commas, they should be separated from one another by semicolons.