Hey, everyone, welcome to another English grammar lesson. Today we're going to be covering
semicolons.
So semicolons are very, very simple. Here are the three rules you need to remember:
First, semicolons break up two complete sentences or independent clauses—kind of like periods.
Wherever you can put a period, you can probably put a semicolon—like this… The only thing
to think about is that usually with a semicolon you want to link together two sentences that
are sort of related. Like, they go together. So, if you have a couple sentences that are
about very different things, a period might work better. Notice, though—and this is
rule number two—that I did not capitalize the word after the semicolon. You should never
capitalize the word after a semicolon, unless it's a word that should always be capitalized,
like “I” or a name or any proper noun, really. That's the only time you should be
capitalizing after a semicolon. And the third and final rule is that you cannot use semicolons
with “FANBOYS” conjunctions. When you're joining two sentences with a FANBOYS conjunction,
you need a comma, not a semicolon. Okay, so let’s take a look at some examples, and
we’ll see if we think the semicolons are being used correctly. Let's take a look: "I've
played basketball since I was four; It's my favorite sport." Okay, what do you think?
Is the semicolon correct or not? Well, let’s go through our rules. Do we have two complete
sentences here? Yes, we do. “I’ve played basketball since I was four” is a sentence,
and “It’s my favorite sport is a sentence.” Okay, so let’s go to rule number two: capitalization.
Remember, we're only supposed to capitalize the word after a semicolon if it's a word
that should always be capitalized—and "it's" is not one of those words. So, in order to
make this sentence correct, we'd actually have to make it lowercase. Let's look at this
one: "I like ketchup; but I'm not a fan of mustard." All right, rule number one: Are
we breaking up two full sentences here? Yes, we are. Rule number two: Is the capitalization
correct? Yep. “But” is not a proper noun, so we leave it lowercase. But wait a minute,
the word “but” is a FANBOYS conjunction, and remember rule number three: We should
not be using a semicolon with a FANBOYS conjunction. So, to make this sentence correct, we'd actually
just want to use a comma, not a semicolon. Couple more… "My name is Karen; not Katie."
All right, let's see what we've got with this one. And some red flags should be going up
right away for most of you guys. Why? Well, because the second part of this sentence—the
part after the semicolon—isn't a complete sentence. And remember, we can only use semicolons
if we've got two complete sentences. So, unfortunately, this sentence is not correct either. We would
actually just do away with the semicolon and maybe throw a comma in there instead. All
right, last one: "Today is Tuesday; tomorrow will be Wednesday." Whew... all right... how
many sentences do I have here? Two, so that checks out. What about capitalization? Looks
good—“tomorrow” is not a word that should always be capitalized. And finally, am I using
any FANBOYS conjunctions when I shouldn't be? Answer is no. Sweet. We finally have a
correct sentence on our hands. Cool! Well, whether you came here for a refresher or are
just now learning this stuff for the first time, I hope this video helped. Be sure to
check out the free practice down in the description, and—uh—we’ll see you next time. Thanks.
Actually, a little PS: There is technically one more way that you can use semicolons,
and that’s to separate items in a list where the individual items have commas in them.
I don’t think I could have explained that any better, actually… So, if you want to
know more about that, you should probably just go look that up on your own. We may cover
it in a future video, but it’s not first on the priorities, so we’ll see. Anyway,
… uh, see ya!