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# semicolon

«semicolon» in Mova's school dictionary: **the punctuation mark ; which joins two closely linked…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a semicolon, semicolons)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A semicolon is the punctuation mark ; which joins two closely linked full sentences. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#m1)

2) A semicolon can also separate items in a long list when the items already contain commas. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

In grammar lessons (and UK SATs), pupils learn to use a semicolon between two main clauses: «It was raining; we stayed in.» It is stronger than a comma but weaker than a full stop. In computer coding, many languages end each line with a semicolon.

### examples

- It was late; we went home. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#x1)
- A semicolon looks like a dot on top of a comma. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#x2)
- Use a semicolon to join two related sentences. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#x3)
- We visited Paris, France; Rome, Italy; and Dublin, Ireland. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#x4)
- In some code you must end each line with a semicolon. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#x5)
- I love reading; my brother loves football. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/#x6)

### note

Do not use a semicolon before «and/but» joining short clauses, and do not use it to start a list (that's a colon :). Both sides of a semicolon should usually be full sentences.

### In the corpora

- [A semicolon joins two complete sentences that are closely related: "It rained; we stayed in."](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/36-brackets-dashes-colons-semicolons-and-hyphens/10/)
- [A semicolon can join two full sentences that are closely linked: "It was raining; we stayed in."](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/52-sats-grammar-punctuation-and-spelling-paper/9/)
- [If one side of a semicolon could not stand alone as a sentence, the semicolon is wrong there.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/52-sats-grammar-punctuation-and-spelling-paper/10/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «semicolon» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/semicolon/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.