Have you ever glimpsed a small semicolon tattoo on someone’s wrist? While it may seem like an ordinary punctuation mark, the semicolon tattoo represents a symbolic movement far beyond basic grammar.

Semicolon use is down, and its slide is making headlines. In the U.S., these punctuation marks are appearing in published books about half as often as they did 25 years ago. The same trend can be seen ...

Cecelia Watson, author of “Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.” Historian and philosopher of science. Faculty member in Bard College’s Language and Thinking program.

It's divisive; it cleaves; it drives some people crazy. The writer Kurt Vonnegut said of the semicolon: It's showy; it's chiefly used to show you've been to college. More than two-thirds of young ...

Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on Jan. 2, 2026. Click here for that audio. The semicolon has been described as a "graceful pause" in writing. But this graceful punctuation mark is being ...

If you have seen someone with a semicolon tattoo, you may not be aware of the meaning behind the symbol. It’s a constant reminder that there is support, someone out there who understands and that ...

In the delightful Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, Cecelia Watson, a historian and philosopher of science, takes readers through a lively and varied “biography” of the ...

“The semicolon is a place where our anxieties and our aspirations about language, class and education are concentrated, so that in this small mark big ideas are distilled down to a few winking drops ...

Love or detest it, the semicolon is the most divisive punctuation mark of the modern era. Should we even care? "His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free." From the ...