The Function of Semi-Colon
I found this sentence and thought this is awkward.

"Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants."

I thought that the function of Semi-Colon is to divide the two sentences.
But it is followed by nouns (pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees).

Is my understanding of Semi-Colon wrong??
If so, what is the function of the punctuation??

I appreciate any kinds of your helps.
Thank you :)

Question

The Function of Semi-Colon
I found this sentence and thought this is awkward.

"Tropical bats play important roles in the rain forest ecosystem, aiding in the dispersal of cashew, date, and fig seeds; pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees; and indirectly helping to produce tequila by pollinating agave plants."

I thought that the function of Semi-Colon is to divide the two sentences.
But it is followed by nouns (pollinating banana, breadfruit, and mango trees).

Is my understanding of Semi-Colon wrong??
If so, what is the function of the punctuation??

I appreciate any kinds of your helps.
Thank you :)

Answer

Hi Naoki,

The semi-colon is indeed for separating two phrases that ordinarily could stand alone as sentences, but are so closely related that it makes sense to keep them together.

We can also use the semi-colon as it is used in the sentence you provided above - when there is a list of items, but the items in the list require their own punctuation with commas, we use a semi-colon instead of a comma to denote where each list item ends.

Hope this helps!

Answer

The sentence is correctly-punctuated, don't worry about that! :)

Have a look at this (entertaining) link below, on semicolon usage. It's really quite informative.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon

Answers · 4

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