semicolon

The semicolon appeared for the first time in print in 1494, in a book published by Aldus Manutius the Elder in Venice: Pietro Bembo's *De Aetna*, a dialogue about climbing Mount Etna. Manutius needed a mark stronger than a comma but softer than a colon — a half-stop for clauses that were related but independent. He combined the dot of the colon with the curve of the comma and placed it on the page. No other punctuation mark has such a precise birth date and birthplace.

The word itself is a hybrid: semi from Latin (half) and colon from Greek (a clause or limb). A semicolon is literally a half-clause mark. Manutius was a scholar of Greek who brought Greek editorial practices into Latin and Italian printing. His semicolon was one of several innovations — he also standardized italic type, the pocket-sized book, and the modern comma.

For three centuries, the semicolon held its ground in European prose. Montaigne used it lavishly. So did the American founders — the Declaration of Independence contains a semicolon that separates the preamble from the list of grievances. But by the 20th century, the mark fell out of fashion. Kurt Vonnegut called semicolons "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing." George Orwell avoided them. Hemingway barely used them.

In 2013, the semicolon found unexpected new meaning. Project Semicolon, founded by Amy Bleuel, adopted the mark as a symbol for mental health awareness and suicide prevention. The metaphor was precise: a semicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence but chose to continue. The most scholarly of punctuation marks became a tattoo, a bumper sticker, a statement that the story goes on.