;

See also: ؛ [U+061B ARABIC SEMICOLON]

; U+003B, &#59; SEMICOLON ← : [U+003A] Basic Latin < → [U+003C]

; U+037E, ; GREEK QUESTION MARK ← ͽ [U+037D] Greek and Coptic Ϳ → [U+037F]

Character variations

﹔ U+FE54, ﹔ SMALL SEMICOLON [unassigned: U+FE53] ← ﹒ [U+FE52] Small Form Variants ﹕ → [U+FE55]

； U+FF1B, ； FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON ← ： [U+FF1A] Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms ＜ → [U+FF1C]

︔ U+FE14, ︔ PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL SEMICOLON ← ︓ [U+FE13] Vertical Forms ︕ → [U+FE15]

Translingual

Description

A full stop (.) above a comma (,).

Etymology

Derives from the punctus versus.

The Italian printer Aldus Manutius established the practice of using the semicolon mark to separate words of opposed meaning, and to indicate interdependent statements. The earliest, general use of the semicolon in English was in 1591.

Punctuation mark

; (English name semicolon)

1. Substitutes coordinating conjunctions such as and, but, and for. The pause is longer than the comma but shorter than a period/full stop.

   Nothing is true; everything is permitted.

2. Separates items in a list where the list items themselves include commas.

   Guests at the summit included David Cameron, the British Prime Minister; Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor; and François Hollande, the French President.

3. (archaic) Separates clauses with opposed meanings.
   • 1878, Franz Delitzsch with Neumann, translated by Thomas Rawson Birks, Commentary on the Book of Isaiah‎^[1] (in English), page 247:

     The name Θῖναι, Strabo, Σῖναι, Ptol., Τζίνιτζα, Kosmas, did not obtain currency first from the founder of the dynasty Tsin; but, long before this, Tsin was the name of a feudal kingdom in Shensi, one of the western provinces of the Sinese land, and Feitsa, the first feudal King of Tsin, began to reign as early as b.c. 897.

4. Represents two eyes vertically aligned, the lower one winking, in order to form emoticons.
5. (programming) Marks the end of a statement in some programming languages.

   <?php echo '<p>Hello World</p>'; ?> (PHP)

   printf("Hello world!"); (C)

6. (speech therapy) Used to separate the year and month of a child's age.

Usage notes

• In French, all composite symbols (i.e. ;, :, ! and ?) should be preceded by a non-breaking space, except ! and ? in Canadian French, where no preceding space is needed.
• In Greek, this symbol is a question mark, and the role of semicolon is fulfilled by U+0387 ·, the άνω τελεία (áno teleía, “upper stop”).

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:;.

Derived terms

• & ;

See also

• Semicolon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Punctuation

• apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
• curly brackets or braces (US) ( { } )
• square brackets or brackets (US) ( [ ] )
• colon ( : )
• comma ( , )
• dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
• ellipsis ( … )
• exclamation mark ( ! )
• fraction slash ( ⁄ )
• guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )
• hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
• interpunct ( · )
• interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
• brackets or parentheses (US, Canada) ( ( ) )
• full stop or period (US, Canada) ( . )
• question mark ( ? )
• quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
• quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )
• semicolon ( ; )
• slash or stroke (UK) ( / )
• space ( ] [ )

Ancient Greek

Punctuation mark

;

1. ? (the Greek question mark)

See also

• (Greek-script letters) Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω
• (non-Classical letters) Ϝ (W) ϝ (w), Ͷ ͷ, Ͱ (H) ͱ (h), Ϻ (S) ϻ (s), Ϟ, ϟ, Ϙ (Q) ϙ (q), Ͳ (S) ͳ (s)
• (punctuation) · ;
• (diacritics) ᾿ ῾ ◌́ ◌̀ ῀ ¨

Greek

Punctuation mark

;

1. ? (the Greek question mark)

   Με συγχωρείτε· πού είναι οι τουαλέτες;

   Me synchoreíte; poú eínai oi toualétes;

   Excuse me; where are the toilets?

Usage notes

• While there is a specific character for solely the Greek question mark (; – U+037E), the regular semicolon (U+003B) is preferred.
• In Greek, a semicolon is represented by · (U+0387), named the άνω τελεία (áno teleía, “upper stop”).

Lhao Vo

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʔ/

Letter

;

1. glottal stop with low lexical tone.

Usage notes

The punctuation mark is separated from the preceding word by a space.

Low tone is written ⟨꞉⟩ with any other final.