How to use a semi-colon | Year 5 English PDF Download

What is a semi-colon?

A semicolon can replace a full stop between two connected sentences, linking them in a way that a full stop does not.
It appears like this ;
When used properly, the semicolon can enhance clarity in writing.
Consider this example.
Hannah loves football; it's her preferred sport.
In this sentence, one of the clauses ("it's her preferred sport") wouldn't fully make sense alone.
It requires the first clause to be fully clear, so we connect the two clauses with a semicolon (;).

When do you use a semi-colon?

A semicolon can sometimes replace a coordinating conjunction (words like 'and', 'but', or 'so') in a sentence.
For instance:
Her cape is yellow, and his cape is green.
Instead of using 'and', we can write:
Her cape is yellow; his cape is green.
Semicolons can also be used in a list.
Typically, commas are used to separate items in a list, like this:
They saw seaweed, seagulls, shells, pebbles, and starfish.
However, when a list includes different groups of words, we introduce a colon before the list and then use semicolons to separate the groups.
For example:
Then Lola saw: three fishing boats; a speedboat; two divers in the water; and someone watching it all from the rocks.