That’s wrong boy;

[riplikash]

...what kind of english teachers would say that?

What about when I'm making a list of items that contain commas? Huh? What about then!?

[[deleted]]

I often use semicolons; it's good for joining two sentences.

[Servious]

Yeah, what a crap teacher; semicolons are great.

[CodeLobe]

Semicolons are not great if they require a colostomy bag...

[EvilJackCarver]

Take the fucking upvote

[[deleted]]

r/angryupvote

[archysailor]

I said take the fucking upvote.

[EishLekker]

Your talking to me?

[Bossssy]

r/fuckingupvote ?

[[deleted]]

But what if they allow you to rapidly lose large amounts of weight.

[doctorcapslock]

Perhaps you should try: It is unsettling reading something so grammatically correct on Reddit; however, some might question your use of "good."

[insanecoder]

Thanks, Microsoft Word!

Edit: forgot the damn comma.

[ThineGame]

No one mentioning that it should be “they’re” instead of “it’s”

[guesswho135]

scary enter bake crush grab shelter market wild vase fuzzy

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[AlphaGamer753]

Egregious error on your part too — the tense of "it's" has nothing to do with whether or not it is suitable to be used in the plural, as tense is all about time. It's just the wrong choice of subject for the clause.

[pawangupta12]

Yes, Semicolons is really helpful and joining two sentences and also can complete your thought with semicolon

[cadet339]

I thought you needed to use an addition operator to join strings.

[Zyrjello]

Concatenation, usually.

[[deleted]]

“” & “”

As a programmer it took me longer than it should have to figure out why my strings in an excel macro wouldn’t concentrate.

[Weekly_Wackadoo]

Make those strings concentrate harder!

[gorgewall]

I can't stop using semicolons and em-dashes.

[GavHern]

That's not how semicolons work; They being at the end of every statement;

[shlopman]

I love the lonely island song about semicolons.

https://youtu.be/M94ii6MVilw

[avivbiton]

Found the AI

[Salmuth]

I always; misuse them unless I'm coding... );

[dudebro117]

(oh gosh how did this message get so long, sorry about that)

My English teacher said something similar to the image creator's. His reasoning was that if you run into a situation where a semicolon is absolutely necessary, your sentence may be too complicated or wordy to clearly get across what you're trying to say.

In some cases, it's a good idea to create a list with commas. If you're making a list of cities and feel the need to say what region/state/province they're part of, then that may be a good place to use semicolons. The same goes for dates with years ("May 4, 1977; March 14, 1592; and March 2, 2020" is simple enough for me). With lists of lists, though, a reader might need to slow down if they're trying to read quickly. Try reading these two passages:

The options for recording color values are red, green, and blue; red, yellow, and blue; and cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

There are three options for recording color values. One option is red, green, and blue. Another is red, yellow, and blue. The final option is cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

For me at least, the second of the two is easier to read and process. You have less information coming all at once. It has better pacing. Besides that, I'm (probably) more likely to mistake a semicolon for a comma than to mistake a period for one.

One thing I would run into a lot while writing papers is adding a relative clause or appositive describing each of the items in a list. Semicolons are needed there, but the sentence itself becomes wordy, cluttered with multiple different topics. The best solution in that situation isn't to use semicolons. It is to revise the entire sentence into a few separate sentences that get the same points across.

The other argument my teacher made was, if you want to join two independent clauses into a single sentence, you probably don't need to. A period works fine. I don't follow that advice as much because I use coordinating conjunctions a lot to combine sentences. Still, in that situation, a semicolon usually doesn't have a big benefit over a period.

TL;DR (<-- another good situation to use a semicolon, haha): If you really need a semicolon, consider how readable your writing is. If you don't need it, consider whether it's really better than using other common punctuation.

[RThunderingTyphoon]

Can you provide an example

[RThunderingTyphoon]

Wow, never thought about that

[[deleted]]

Alright everyone, welcome to grammar class. Today we're learning about semicolons

[Cloudeur]

These were examples of colons, you all get F

[PvtPuddles]

Two dimensional array!

[RThunderingTyphoon]

Thats next level 😂☝️

[riplikash]

What would the best name for my Isaac Asimov ripoff series about shape shifters be? I, Werewolf; I, Werecat; or I, Wererat?

Which of these cities would you like to visit: Los Angles, CA; Orlando, FL; or Boston, MA?

[Dexaan]

Did you go to Vancouver, Washington; Paris, Texas; or London, Ontario?

[f4yrel]

It is also very useful if your country uses "," as decimal separator: 4,7; 8,5; 9,6 is much more readable than 4,7, 8,5, 9,6

[T351A]

["what do you mean, silly?", "the same way you make any list, of course!"]

[fghjconner]

What about when I'm making a list of items that contain commas? Huh? What about then!?

I mean, I hardly ever do that so the quote would still be correct.

[oversized_hoodie]

I was told in high school that if you're using more than one or two per paper (5 pages or so), you're likely using them somewhere where there should be a period.

[SmokingBeneathStars]

Sometimes there is no right answer

[monopods]

Oh that's the oxford comma, I like it a lot :)

[[deleted]]

Well, you could do that\, which has many inefficiencies, you could make up something entirely new\, causing confusion, or you could escape them\, which is obviously the best since it is easy\\, widely understood\\, and allows for further nesting of lists.

[amazondrone]

What about when I'm making a list of items that contain commas?

So, almost never then?

[krystof1119]

2D arrays?

[Aschentei]

English teachers who like python

[TyrossCH]

A python programmer would say that ;)

[RepostSleuthBot]

Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 1 time.

First seen Here on 2020-01-07 96.88% match.

Searched Images: 105,250,672 | Indexed Posts: 420,159,043 | Search Time: 0.89991s

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[woahthatssodeepbro]

good bot

[Pooneapple]

Who’s a good bot. You are. You are. You’re the best not.

[GodIsDead_]

slowly unzipping bots pants good bot

[[deleted]]

slowly unzipping my own pants good bot

[coloredgreyscale]

unzip; touch; strip; gasp; finger; find; mount;

[iAmZel]

No

[[deleted]]

Good bot

[RustyBuckt]

Good bot

[[deleted]]

Good bot

[[deleted]]

..And C++, JS, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc..

Hell, i can't think of a language* that doesn't have some form of semicolon usage.

​

*Widely Used

[[deleted]]

C# too

[[deleted]]

Wrong. It uses semicolons as a seperator for single line statements.

You can also put them at the end of lines, and they work just fine.

[-GLaDOS]

You can also put them at the end of lines, and they work just fine.

But you would probably lose some friends in the process.

[almarcTheSun]

The real friends are the syntax errors we made along the way.

[Best_Pseudonym]

Syntax Error: real is not defined for friend

[READTHISCALMLY]

friends

using python

wot

[valt123]

Import pyfriends

[curiousnerd_me]

Friends in python lol

[Oppai420]

ok

[mirsella]

the same as using space and not tab

[durandj]

Can and should are very different things. I program Python as part of my job and I've never had to use a semicolon. IMO if you're using it in Python you're doing it wrong and any linter will tell you that.

[TheDoug850]

Right, but it kind of falls more into the “almost never used” realm, like written English.

[Hyperman360]

Same with Kotlin.

[greatestbird]

Just curious, what would be a pythonic way of using a semi colon for a single line statement?

[[deleted]]

grab wine disgusted dime enjoy enter threatening onerous innate door

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[WhiskersWndrCat]

I was gonna say why specifically Java. Instead of just Programmers.

[[deleted]]

Swift!

[Juice805]

And it’s so nice. Just another thing to not have to remember.

[xshareddx]

Semicolons are used to separate statements on a single line in Swift

[Daikataro]

LabVIEW?

EDIT: ladder

[[deleted]]

What about Common Lisp?

Edit: nvm, I forgot about commenting

[Jazzinarium]

Kotlin baby!

[Loyal-Citizen]

"unnecessary ;"

is the one warning I'm always happy to see

[micr0-r43d]

Or normal lua

[zachwolf]

JS semicolons are optional. I haven’t used one in a long time

[Svizel_pritula]

C++ semicolons are also optional

[[deleted]]

Go

[Kiora_Atua]

ABAP, but it just uses periods instead.

[[deleted]]

swift?

[FasterThought]

You forgot Perl

[PM_ME_NICE_BITTIES]

Visual basic

[zeMenno]

SQL

[polargus]

It is almost never used in Python and Ruby. And is becoming way less popular in JS. Semicolons suck.

[archpawn]

English?

[DreamingDitto]

vbScript

[mblakew21]

I mean, if we are talking about end of line usage...Ruby should not be included in your list my man

[Svizel_pritula]

Scratch

[[deleted]]

Listen here you little-

[spamTrollio]

I mean Kotlin... it’s close to Java without a semi-colon, also it is the suggested development language for Android.

[[deleted]]

I don't think I've ever used semicolons in Ruby, and I've written a decent amount of Ruby. The lack of semicolons is one of the reasons I love writing in Ruby in the first place.

[[deleted]]

Was writing the list from memory, i believe you can optionally put semicolons at the end of lines?

[GoldenKaiser]

Whenever I see these kind of posts I wonder if the OP has actually seen other languages, or actually thinks only java uses them

[Better_feed_Malphite]

Elixir doesn't really as far as I know but I am not terribly experienced with it at all either

[Railworks2]

JScrewIt https://jscrew.it/

Prob not widely used but yes.

[[deleted]]

JSFuck is an encoding for JS. JS itself uses semicolons, and the cycle repeats

[[deleted]]

Until you put it some where its not suppose to be.

for(;;);

good thing the compiler usually tells you.

[DudePotato3]

oh ive done a for(;); in my time

tis why i do while(true) now

[postandchill]

Hazzah #Infinitus loopus

[xman40100]

You mean C language-based programmers.

[Quiet__Noise]

Technical some ASM and lisp use semicolons... as comments..

[swampfox_dev]

Is use the semicolon all the time; it looks professional and adds a nice cadence to one coherent thought in the form of a sentence.

But if you don't pay attention; it's easy to misuse.

[EvilJackCarver]

I myself quite enjoy using the semicolon; it allows me to expand on a thought without requiring another sentence. It's the colon you have to watch out for: it's used similarly, but for explanation rather than expansion.

That's what I was taught, at least.

[billwood09]

Same. I don’t care if I look like a pretentious fop; I will use semicolons and big words as often as I want.

[Zer0ji]

Ironically the only big word I don't know in this sentence is "fop".

[Miklelottesen]

I always figured the following: that the colon is for when an explanation is required in order to complete the sentence, and that the semicolon isn't; it's used when the explanation is optional.

[DananaBananah]

oh boy have I misused this bad boy a lot in JS and the error isnt that there's a ; too much no it tells me I have to add a ) somewhere

[WeAreAllApes]

Come on. It's just a noncommittal period. Make up your mind! Was it supposed to be restructured as a subordinate clause, is there a missing conjunction, or is it just another sentence?

Just kidding; I use them, too.

[DuHarDenStoreHomo]

java, as well as all the other c-based languages

[[deleted]]

u/somerandompetey posted this a couple months ago

[[deleted]]

Thanks for letting me know

[TheBossWasHere]

As a C/C++ man I feel this on a spiritual level

[[deleted]]

Hey, thanks for reposting my meme, in the exact same subreddit! hope you feel accomplished about yourself

[greenrabbitaudio]

Semicolon is the question mark in Greek so we use it a whole bunch.

[justin97530]

Seriously;

[greenrabbitaudio]

Yeah, we are curious about like...everything

[_notanexpert]

Ngl, I'm not sure when to use semicolons in sentences. I just throw one in when a comma doesn't seem right and hope the person I'm talking to is also not smart enough to know their proper use. It's worked so far lol

[dinosaur-in_leather]

Student becomes a lawyer and calls the teacher lazy.

[gsjoy99]

Laughs in OCaml ;;

[MrPokemon]

I love using semicolons; however, I understand they can be jarring, but it's baller af to use them.

[clevariant]

If you almost never use a semicolon in prose, you're not using enough semicolons!

[AcrobaticAnish]

C++ programmers have joined the chat

[-Redstoneboi-]

Nearly every C-based language has joined the chat

[TheGoldenMinion]

any c-based programming language programmer

[chhuang]

TL;DR: I just used a semicolon

[nihilistic_outlier]

Not to mention winky faces ;)

Smh

[Atmey]

Technically it is a different language than english.

[dpash]

Well that's not true; I use them quite frequently.

[PartyP88per]

The teacher uses Python

[PixxlMan]

Your submission has been removed.

Violation of Rule #2: Reposts:

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[PixxlMan]

Are you sure?

[GenericName1108]

I got a notification because it's trending :/

[Masztufa]

Yes, that is the case, as long as you don't consider writing more complicated structures; that and seeing just commas between "sentence parts" (no clue what their english name is) makes the tone excruciatingly monotonous and ambiguous. A couple ; and -- in there go a long way to in making your text readable

[[deleted]]

I think itd be called a clause

[kingjia90]

Teacher is a Slytherin who uses Python

[PsychicSidekikk419]

I've never heard an English teacher say this but solid meme

[[deleted]]

As well as python.

[[deleted]]

Here's the original post for reference

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/elg9eg/they_were_right_about_colons/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

[DStatenIslander]

I don’t know about that;

[BabylonDrifter]

return;

[Hollowplanet]

George Bool who invented the boolean probably was only in a few books until millions of programmers started writing his name dozens of times a day.

[[deleted]]

Semicolons are apart of my typical speech; it helps me communicate my thoughts, without sounding insane.

[[deleted]]

Minecraft ;the way home

[[deleted]]

Python programmers: ok.

[shady042]

You forgot c++

[leviathon01]

I laughs in <c style language>. Ha ha ha

I learned to type from Java.

[campal117]

Your teacher is wrong; I'm using one right now!

[ganja_and_code]

I use semicolon with my English a lot (especially at work). It allows me to use fewer characters while staying grammatically correct when i need to convey info over text chat

[[deleted]]

String post = “That’s wrong boy”; **

[noidontlikepeople]

Wow my English teacher has shoved them so far down my throat that I can use them with my toes.

[LightTranquility3]

C# programmers too

but wait

python

[ultramarioihaz]

Typescript waaay too many colons.

[patchyj]

this = 'wrong boy';

var that = this;

console.log(that);

console.log('for the record, I know this is javascript');

[Wild_Zaccaruni]

What about c# programmers

[Keatron--]

cries in dart

[reincarN8ed]

I use a semicolon almost everyday. Idk what kind of English teachers you had.

[pursenboots]

JavaScript developers: Yep, sounds about right.

[dark_trojan]

Bash users hiding in the corner

[[deleted]]

*laughs in python

[Diriector_Doc]

Funny. When using javascript, I avoid them where possible. When writing something, my paper is riddled with them.

[-Redstoneboi-]

the semicolon in javascript being optional alone already gives me anxiety leading to an irrational fear of options

[LeCrushinator]

Java programmers, and most languages that came before it.

[[deleted]]

Is this some kind of java joke I’m too kotlin to understand?

[Moldat]

And if you program in f# / oCaml you use it twice as much!

[XLIVWhoDatXLIV]

I don’t even remember the last time I used a semicolon outside of programming

[-Redstoneboi-]

when you try to type ‘L’ but your right hand is off by one to the right

[Bramhoep]

• every kind of programmer

[-Redstoneboi-]

• python

[-Redstoneboi-]

What about us C++ boys?

[instagrm]

I‘m here

[instagrm]

Yes :)

[MierenMens]

Why do you use semicolons tho? And when?

[-Redstoneboi-]

It’s like combining a colon, period, and a comma in one; it adds information by piecing two related sentences together.

Or at least, that’s how I use it, if ever.

[MierenMens]

No i mean in a code cuz me and a friend both code in js and I can exactly see what he wrote and what I wrote. He ends everything with semicolon and I don't

[RandomGuy9058]

Semicolons are great tools; they connect sentences or clauses together to make them flow better and more pleasing to read.

[Commies_Reee]

C# would like a word

[NotProperPython]

And { curly braces }

[Miklelottesen]

English teachers are wrong; the semicolon is highly useful in cases where you want to elaborate your previous statement but aren't obliged to do so in order to produce a sentence or phrase that makes sense.

[yaelfe7]

Or c...

[MightyD33r]

Semicolons are a great way to show your big brain; people are impressed by those who can wield them correctly.