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The semicolon; (or semi-colon [1]) is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language , a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought, such as when restating the preceding idea with a different expression.
In this table, The first cell in each row gives a symbol; The second is a link to the article that details that symbol, using its Unicode standard name or common alias.
Punctuation in the English language helps the reader to understand a sentence through visual means other than just the letters of the alphabet. [1] English punctuation has two complementary aspects: phonological punctuation, linked to how the sentence can be read aloud, particularly to pausing; [2] and grammatical punctuation, linked to the structure of the sentence. [3]
Comma-separated values (CSV) is a text file format that uses commas to separate values, and newlines to separate records. A CSV file stores tabular data (numbers and text) in plain text, where each line of the file typically represents one data record.
Comma splices are rare in most published writing, [6] but are common among inexperienced writers of English. [1] [7]The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White advises using a semicolon, not a comma, to join two grammatically complete clauses, or writing the clauses as separate sentences.
[6] [2] [7] In some specialized contexts, the word decimal is instead used for this purpose (such as in International Civil Aviation Organization-regulated air traffic control communications). In mathematics, the decimal separator is a type of radix point , a term that also applies to number systems with bases other than ten.
It was adopted by Church Slavonic and eventually settled on a form essentially similar to the Latin semicolon. In Unicode, it is separately encoded as U+037E Íž GREEK QUESTION MARK, but the similarity is so great that the code point is normalised to U+003B ; SEMICOLON, making the marks identical in practice. [19]
The colon, :, is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots aligned vertically. A colon often precedes an explanation, a list, [1] or a quoted sentence. [2] It is also used between hours and minutes in time, [1] between certain elements in medical journal citations, [3] between chapter and verse in Bible citations, [4] and, in the US, for salutations in business letters and other ...