It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences - June Casagrande 2010

Taking the punk out of punctuation: The problem with semicolons and parentheses

If you've come to this chapter looking for a balanced and reasonable discussion of semicolons and parentheses, keep looking. You'll find no balance here. I hate semicolons. I hate them so much that, even though I admit that they can be useful—lifesavers even—I'm comfortable saying that I hate them. I hate parentheses almost as much. They, too, have their place. In fact, I use them. As a Reader, I sometimes enjoy the effect they can create. Yet these reasonable observations don't mean I'm reasonable on the subject. I've seen too many writers abuse these punctuation marks too many times. I can't let go. I won't.

I suppose this is the very nature of prejudice—isolated bad experiences leading to broad and unfair overgeneralizations. But here we are, with me outright hating semicolons and parentheses even as I prepare to discuss them in terms that I hope will let you draw your own conclusions.

We'll start with an open airing of my biases:

1. Semicolons often serve no purpose other than to show off that the writer knows how to use semicolons.

2. Parentheses often let a writer cram in information she was too lazy to explain in a more Reader-friendly manner.

Aah. Feels good to get that off my chest. Now we can take a more academic approach.

Semicolons have two main jobs. First, they help manage unwieldy lists. Second, they separate two closely related clauses that could stand on their own as sentences. This first job doesn't bother me so much. That's because, sometimes, this semicolon really is a Reader-serving punctuation mark:

Brad visited Pasadena, California; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Sarasota, Florida; and Boulder, Colorado.

These semicolons separate items that contain commas within them. The semicolons work like ubercommas. Try replacing them with plain-old commas and you can see that they're crucial for making sense of this sentence. Without the semicolons, Pasadena, California, Cheyenne, and Wyoming would be equally weighted. If this sentence were read aloud, these words would be read in the same tone and with identical emphasis. The semicolons allow us to clearly see the groupings within our list—that is, that Pasadena and California make up one thing and are not two things.

And that's the last nice thing you'll hear me say about semicolons.

This function of the semicolon, while crucial in some situations, gets abused. That is, it gives writers an excuse—nay, an incentive— to write obnoxious sentences:

He wanted to visit Brooklyn, New York; Queens, New York; and Schenectady, New York, and he had already invited his cousin, Pete; his mother's next-door neighbor, Rob; and the neighborhood dog, a terrier, to join him.

This writer is too enamored of her semicolons. She uses them at the expense of her sentence. She would be better off using none.

He wanted to visit Brooklyn, Queens, and Schenectady. He had already invited his cousin, Pete, his next-door neighbor, Rob, and a local terrier to join him.

The second job of the semicolon is worse. This is from an article about spas that I copyedited:

"Now shower; and your skin will feel like silk," she told me.

Allow me to translate: "Look at me! I can use semicolons!"

This semicolon, used to separate two independent clauses, is perfectly legitimate. But independent clauses, by definition, can stand alone. So why wouldn't the writer let them do so? She could have used a comma. She could have made these two sentences. Or she could have used nothing.

Such semicolons are often justified, but they're never necessary— except for showing Readers that you know how to use them. It's the height of writer-serving writing and the root of my prejudice against semicolons.

I try to keep my prejudice in check. If I come across something like this, I leave it:

Holly hadn't had a drink for weeks; she wanted one badly.

If the writer believes that these independent clauses are so closely-linked that they belong in the same sentence, it's not my place as a copy editor to disagree. But when I'm the writer, I just separate the sentences.

Other, more reasonable experts also dislike semicolons: "The semicolon is an ugly bastard, and thus I tend to avoid it," writes Washington Post business copy desk chief Bill Walsh in the book Lapsing Into a Comma. That brings us to another important point: Readability and aesthetics go hand in hand. A sentence riddled with semicolons can be hard on the eyes—Readers' eyes.

"My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semicolons!" Kurt Vonnegut said in a 2007 speech. "They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college."

Parentheses, on the other hand, can be indispensable. But often they can make a sentence messy and overly busy. And, like semicolons, they tend to get abused. Here's an example:

CarCo's L9 Sports Activity Coupe claims to marry coupe-like handling to SUV-ish utility. Though it's more coupe (the fastest version does 0-60 mph in 5.3 seconds) than SUV (offering less cargo space than CarCo's smaller L4 crossover), the instantly recognizable L9 comes close to the hype.

An article writer's job is to make information easily digestible. But parentheses often amount to force-feeding. They tell the Reader, "I couldn't be bothered weaving all the important facts into a readable narrative, so I just crammed them in here."

Yes, it's more work to craft the facts into palatable sentences, but that's the writer's job:

CarCo's L9 Sports Activity Coupe claims to marry coupe-like handling with SUV-ish utility. It's more coupe than SUV. The fastest version does 0-60 mph in 5.3 seconds, and it offers less cargo space than CarCo's smaller L4 crossover. Yet the instantly recognizable L9 comes close to the hype.

Sometimes, parentheses really are the best way to serve the information to the Reader. Usually, the smaller the parenthetical insertion, the better it works. The more stuff crammed between the parentheses and the more parentheses crammed into the sentence, the bigger the clue that the sentence needs an overhaul.

If you disagree, you're in good company. Some writers love parentheses and use them to the delight of their Readers. David Foster Wallace was king of the envelope-pushing parentheses:

The CNN sound tech (Mark A., 29, from Atlanta, and after Jay the tallest person on the Trail, vertiginous to talk to, able to get a stick's boom mike directly over McCain's head from the back of even the thickest scrum) has brought out from a complexly padded case a Sony SX-Series Portable Digital Editor ($32,000 retail) and connected it to some headphones and to Jonathan Karl's Dell Latitudes laptop and cell phone, and the three of them are running the CNN videotape of this morning's South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy address, trying to find a certain place where Jonathan Karl's notes

indicate that McCain said something like "Regardless of how Governor Bush and his surrogates have distorted my position on the death penalty . . ."

(And if you think a 38-word parenthetical insertion plus a 2-word parenthetical insertion in a 126-word sentence is astounding, you should see the guy's footnotes. But I parenthetically digress. . .)

This goes to show you how stupid prejudices are. Wallace was a prizewinning and critically acclaimed writer. So clearly, my small-minded view of parentheses doesn't apply. Still. . . how it burns in me.

Wallace used parentheses to create a maze of ideas—a place where Readers can meander and explore. His parentheticals were devices used for the benefit of the Reader and not for the convenience of the writer. Many loved them. Me, I can appreciate what Wallace was doing, but I'm not a fan of these parentheticals and footnotes. I like my information served linear—one bite at a time.

Parentheses can also be used as a sort of voice device—slipping in wry observations, ironies, exclamations, and other little bits of commentary:

George told me he was going out for a pack of cigarettes (yeah, right) and that I shouldn't wait up.

I have no problem with these parentheses. In fact, I like them. They create a nod or a wink or a whisper of "look out." They can add a layer of meaning or a caveat or humor. The difference to me is that, unlike the info-cramming parentheses that serve the writer, parentheses as a voice device serve the Reader.

You can form your own opinions about parentheses and semicolons. Just remember who they're for.