Why We Punctuate; or, Reason Versus Rule in the Use of Marks

by William Livingston Klein

The semicolon here disconnects the second group from the third, giving the third group connection with a larger group, the first and second combined.

The need of the semicolon in No. 58-2 is not determined by the presence of the preceding comma, but mainly by the apparent relations of the groups, such apparent relations being emphasized by the presence of the second “or,” which makes the three groups appear to be in a series. If these groups were in a series, the second “or” would connect the second and third groups. The semicolon at once throws the grouping into two parts, thus making the second “or” connect all that precedes with all that follows.

Although the writer of Sentence 58 appears to have placed no value upon the like formation of the first two groups of this sentence, nor to have recognized the differentiation of the comma from the semicolon, he uses both of these devices in a sentence, quite like the above, in the next paragraph of his essay. It is as follows:

59. It is here that composition is of service to the imagination, and incidentally to culture; and I should speak more largely of this service if there were space in this essay to bring forward all the aspects of college composition.

The need of the semicolon in both Nos. 58 and 59 is, we think, unmistakable.

The comma in No. 59 has no value for the reader. There is no apparent and wrong meaning here requiring this comma; and it is difficult to see how any wrong grouping, in the absence of the comma, is likely to be made by the reader. If this comma were challenged for its meaning we do not know what answer it could give.

The absence of a comma after “imagination” would give notice to the reader that what has been said about “imagination” is to be said about something else in the and relation to “imagination.” The writer, wishing to qualify the added statement, does so before the statement is made, thus throwing matter (one word in this case) between what has preceded and what is to be grouped with “imagination,” as shown by the absence of a mark before “and.” This makes the qualifying word a modified parenthesis. Such treatment of the word, indicated by marks, gives a shade of meaning difficult to express in language. The difference is, perhaps, in the emphasis gained by the punctuation.

We should write the sentence in the following way:

59-1. It is here that composition is of service to the imagination and, incidentally, to culture; and I should speak more largely....