The semicolon has long been a divisive punctuation mark. Since its first reported use published by the Italian printer and humanist Aldus Manutius the Elder in the 1490s, people have both sung its praises and argued for its demise.
President Abraham Lincoln was one of the punctuation mark's supporters: "I have a great respect for the semicolon; it’s a very useful little chap," he wrote. The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, on the other hand, was steadfast in his derision of the semicolon. "All they do is show you've been to college," he wrote of them.
Now, it seems like those in Vonnegut's camp may be winning the fight, according to the results of a recent analysis and survey commissioned by Babbel, a language learning software firm.
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