Semi-anal about the Semicolon

A Brief, Open Letter to My Students:

Please stop with the semicolons; you have clearly never learned their proper usage. I don’t blame you for this, of course. At some point in your formative years you must have encountered a teacher who encouraged you to use this wonderful, 416-year-old mark as a substitute for every other form of punctuation in the English language. You now deploy the semicolon with a convert’s frenzy, and I must note that the spectacle is embarrassing for both of us.

cheers,
d