The Importance of Correct Punctuation

[Seonaid]

Nice! I suppose I should have said that I've never seen it as correct in American English (which is "my" English). I have seen it used in things that were published outside of the country.

 

[Pielorinho]

Indeed. This was probably the hardest error for me to correct in students' papers when I was a writing tutor. I usually compromised by explaining the rule to them (including its British variation, but not its hacker variation--I was unaware of the latter), telling them how stupid I thought the American version was, telling them that despite its stupidity, their professors might mark their paper down if they didn't use the American rule, and then leaving it up to them how to handle it.

Daniel

 

[babomb]

"We considered Miss Roberts for the roles of Marjorie, David's mother, and Louise."

Well, that could be confusing, I'll concede, but if "David's mother" were being used as an appositive, a semicolon should follow it: "We considered Miss Roberts for the roles of Marjorie, David's mother; and Louise."

So here's my question: is it now ok to use the semicolon followed by a "however" ? As in the following sentence:

I used to be quite good at grammar; however, it's been a while.

It was always okay. In fact, your example would be wrong WITHOUT the semicolon. However doesn't connect the two clauses.

I'll use this example: "The first part was easy; however, the second took hours." It looks like however is connecting them, right? Suppose I rearrange it: "The first part was easy; the second, however, took hours." I haven't changed the meaning, but now however clearly is not used to connect the clauses.

If you use the word however, however, you do not use the semicolon.

Just for extra clarity, I'm going to replace the first however:

If you use the word dog, however, you do not use the semicolon.

This is a misleading example. However appears to be connecting the clauses. If we remove "however", the real conjunction becomes clear:

If you use the word dog, you do not use the semicolon.

If is what connects these clauses, and a comma is needed because the subordinate clause is first. In reveal's original quote, however serves the same purpose as in my example above ("The first part was easy; the second, however, took hours.").

Do you see the difference?

If you are using however to mean "by contrast" or "nevertheless", punctuate the sentence exactly as you would if however were not in the sentence. Then add however in and surround it with commas. (It's pretty obvious, but if a semicolon's already there, you don't need a comma on that side.)

On the other hand, if you're using however to mean "in whatever way", "to whatever degree or extent", or "in what way", you probably shouldn't have a semicolon next to it: "It was very clever, however he did it." Note that a semicolon in this example would change the meaning quite a bit!

 

[CronoDekar]

So here's my question: is it now ok to use the semicolon followed by a "however" ? As in the following sentence:

I used to be quite good at grammar; however, it's been a while.

In college, I learned never to do this; the semicolon is meant to separate two complete sentences, and if you're using "however," then you're already separating the sentences and it should be a comma. The last I knew, Strunk & White was still saying ; + "however" was a no-no. I keep seeing it everywhere, though. One example is the author John Sanford; he does it quite a bit. My best friend is also currently taking paralegal courses, and they encourage it. Is it common usage now?

As somewhat off-point, I was always taught that this usage was correct -- that someone could use IC;IC or IC;however/nonetheless/etc., IC. Though I was also taught that the hyphen and the colon could also be used to join sentences if they were similar, and a semicolon if they contrasted. I always wondered about that last one since I only picked it up in one class.

But these were rules I picked up sometime in high school; none of my teachers in college really cared all that much. They may have said "use MLA style" or whatnot but they didn't get picky about it.

And I was going to post this before I read babomb's last post.