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We’ve discussed semicolons before, but when I read what Bill Walsh, of the Washington Post, said about them, I knew I had to take another shot. In his book, Lapsing Into a Comma, he wrote:

The semicolon is an ugly bastard, and thus I tend to avoid it.

This is what I’ve always wanted to say about semicolons. But I’ve never managed to say it with such eloquence. Thank you, Bill.

Is there even the slightest place in the written language for the semicolon? Lamentably, yes. If you’re cruising along writing a sentence that contains a series of things, and at least one of those series contains a comma, use a semicolon for clarity’s sake. Like this:

• Joe jumped over the fence; kissed Jill, Stephanie and Ann; and ran off laughing.

There is another acceptable use for a semicolon, but I personally don’t think it holds water. I’m referring to the rule that states you can use one to join two related sentences together without a conjunction. For example …

• I reached the cliff and looked down; what I saw terrified me.

I believe sentences like that are better off split into two. In fact, I’ve run into very few sentences that have been glued together with these ugly little punctuation marks that wouldn’t have been improved by chopping them neatly in two at the semicolon.

When writing a person’s age, my first suggestion is to exercise extreme caution.

Someone who has spent a fortune to look 40 and wants people to think she is 30 is not likely to thank you when you tell the world she is 50.

My next suggestion is more technical: Always use numerals to indicate a human’s or animal’s age, rather than spelling the number out.

Actually, this isn’t a suggestion. It’s a hard and fast rule, according to The Associated Press Stylebook. But you only have to remember it when referring to ages less than 10, since, as you already know, you should use numerals for numbers above nine anyway, only spelling them out if they are below 10 (with several exceptions, which we’ve addressed in another article). Let’s look at a few examples….

RIGHT: Bobby is 7 years old.
WRONG: Bobby is seven years old.

RIGHT: Janey is a 5-year-old rock star.
WRONG: Janey is a five-year-old rock star.

RIGHT: They were all in their 20s.
WRONG: They were all in their twenties.

RIGHT: Johnny is 7 and Susie is 5.
WRONG: Johnny is seven and Susie is five.

One last point: Notice the previous two sentences. When the context of a sentence doesn’t require the word “years” or the phrase “years old,” it is presumed that the number refers to years of age and not the person’s weight, IQ or number of inner demons.

Did you ever watch the old cartoons where the character would be trying to make a decision and suddenly there were two miniature images of himself above and to the side of his head and one was dressed as an angel telling him to do the right thing and the other was dressed as a devil telling him to do the wrong thing?

That’s what happens to me every time I sit down to write about a rule of grammar, punctuation or usage. Suddenly an angel who looks like me pops up and says, “Tell them to do the right thing and obey this rule,” and at the same time a devil who also looks like me materializes and whispers, “Don’t listen to him. Rules are for sissies. Hemingway broke them. Cormack McCarthy breaks them all the time. Jack Kerouac didn’t even know there were any rules. Let ’em write. Screw the rules!”

That’s what I have to contend with all the time – not only when I write articles about writing rules, but whenever I write anything. For example, the opening paragraph of this article is one long, run-on sentence. The angel-me and the devil-me almost came to blows over that one. If I were writing for a magazine editor or a client, I could never turn that in. But I’m not, and I’ll tell you, that sentence felt good! In my life as a professional writer, the devil-me rarely gets to win.

There’s a reason for that. It has to do with the fact that most rules exist to make written messages clear and understandable. Case in point:

• Sally shot herself while still in elementary school.
• Sally shot, herself, while still in elementary school.

These are the exact same sentences except for the two tiny little commas in the second sentence. Those commas are of life and death importance to Sally, however. The first sentence says she committed suicide with a gun in elementary school. The second says that she, herself, shot guns while still a young girl. Two very different messages.

The rules are important. But then again, it’s easy to get so carried away with them that they tighten you up and pinch off your flow of creativity. It’s a dynamic conflict and in order to write well, it probably has to be that way. That’s why the angels and demons within us will never stop prodding us as long as we write.