Erratic and excessive use of colons and semi-colons is one of my long-standing punctuation demons.  For the final draft of my doctoral thesis before my viva I went on a massive cull, slashing semi-colons until there were a little less than 70 in the book (that’s about one every five pages), and I was still picked up for having too many of the little buggers.

I think my problem was that I was using them as pauses, and worse still as a cheap way to show a link between two ideas without actually demonstrating the link.  This is a common fault in bad academic writing (particularly in Derrida rip offs).  It is a stylistic workaround for not being able to prove what you are saying.  In the short term, learning to write without semi-colons and to minimise the use of colons forces you to provide a clear a constructive argument.

However, in the long-term, there are occasions where the colons and semi-colons are both better and more beautiful.  So how are you supposed to use them?

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