Semicolon

“Delightful, enlightening . . . The twisty history of the hybrid divider perfectly embodies the transience of language.” —Vulture

The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?

In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this in...