‘Fascinating… I loved this book; I really did’ David Crystal, SpectatorA biography of a much misunderstood punctuation mark and a call to arms in favour of clear expression and against stifling grammar rules.Cecelia Watson used to be obsessive about grammar rules. But then she began teaching. And that was when she realized that strict rules aren’t always the best way of teaching people how to make words say what they want them to; ...

"Delightful, enlightening . . . The twisty history of the hybrid divider perfectly embodies the transience of language." — VultureThe semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was...

‘Fascinating… I loved this book; I really did’ David Crystal, SpectatorA biography of a much misunderstood punctuation mark and a call to arms in favour of clear expression and against stifling grammar rules.Cecelia Watson used to be obsessive about grammar rules. But then she began teaching. And that was when she realized that strict rules aren’t always the best way of teaching people how to make words say what they want them to; ...

A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world’s most polarizing punctuation markThe semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the worl...