“My agent told me never, ever to use a semicolon. Should I ever use a semicolon?"

Melville used multiple semicolons in every chapter of Moby Dick I have reviewed and that is one of the top 10 best works of American literature.

Will Durant used semicolons beautifully in his Story of Civilization.

Our best pulp writer, Robert E. Howard, used semicolons.

I use semicolons because they serve a stylistic function, although it drives my son crazy. He went to school for business and advertising in which something nuanced and stylistic is eschewed, as it is in law, medicine and human resources.

Our education is geared toward making money, not producing nuanced literature in various styles. Our entire society is now educated along liberal lines, with our brand of liberalism being dedicated to erasing differences between classes, races, and genders. Now that all of these liberally educated people are in editorial and agent chairs their inculcated aversion to style, variation and nuance will show through in terms of rejecting a sentence which utilizes a semicolon, and opting for two sentences, or a sentence that uses a comma instead. Since one can write perfectly well without ever using a semicolon the semicolon is therefore a relic of an earlier less precise, less regimented age. Let us not test the editor’s ability to judge its optimal use, but rather remove the consideration.

In my opinion Melville overused semicolons, Howard could have used them better and more often, and Durant was the master. Early on I overused them. Most I choose to replace with a comma or obviate by starting a new sentence. But sometimes they are called for.

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; wheras Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”

Let’s have your agent try and improve that by removing the semicolon. She might change it to one or two correct sentences, but it will not have the same feel. I’m sure she would insist on changing the spelling of wheras to whereas as well.

We are not writing instructions for IKEA. This corrosive war on variation, nuance and originality is not some great conspiracy or even a conscious effort, and is not limited to literature. It is merely a result of living in a world of things rather than a world of people.