Semicolon use is down, and its slide is making headlines. In the U.S., these punctuation marks are appearing in published books about half as often as they did 25 years ago. The same trend can be seen ...

Excel keeps a display layer and a data layer.

When you’re learning to type, the first lesson is the home-row position — the keys where your fingers rest: a s d f j k l ;. Learning this, you might naturally assume that the semicolon is pretty ...

In Kurt Vonnegut’s 2005 essay collection A Man Without a Country, he includes the following message on punctuation: Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are ...

There are very few opportunities in life to have it both ways; semicolons are the rare instance in which you can; there is absolutely no downside. By Lauren Oyler For several years I have returned, ...

Seeing a semicolon is becoming increasingly rare; it seems that writers—especially young ones—don't understand how to use them. Instances of the misunderstood piece of punctuation in English-language ...

Ever since Kurt Vonnegut slandered semicolons (“They are transvestite hermaphrodites,” he said, “representing absolutely nothing”), aspiring writers have looked upon them with a mixture of confusion ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

It’s Wednesday; Lonely Island’s Wack Wednesday promotion continues. This week they released a lyric video for “Semicolon”; in the song, they rap about American grammar’s most controversial punctuation ...

A recent study has found a 50% decline in the use of semicolons over the last two decades. The decline accelerates a longterm trend: In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly every 90 ...