Hello! My name is Kevin, I am coming to you - coming from behind the whiteboard
to you and I'm coming to you from magoosh.com! Today we're going to talk about semicolons.
A student who wrote in one of their comments was like, What is a semicolon? What do I do with this thing?
I don't understand it um which is okay because it's a weird thing. It's kind of weird if you don't
know what's going on. I will preface this video that the GMAT doesn't test your knowledge
of semicolons you're not going to be like how to use a semicolon but it's definitely useful to know
how they're used so you can use it in your essay if you know how to use it well
and it'll just give you a good sense of knowing how a sentence is being put together. So
simply, a semicolon is a type of punctuation but it's a type of punctuation that lives
inside a sentence there's external punctuation or punctuation that ends sentences like periods and
question marks and then there's punctuation that is inside a sentence like a comma a dash or
a semicolon, like this little guy. Uhm, and its main purpose is to separate
major elements in a sentence. That's it separating major elements in a sentence. There's three main
ways that a semicolon is used which I have listed here and some examples so let's go through them
you can use a semicolon between independent clauses without a conjunction with no conjunction.
So you can usually join independent clauses with a comma and a conjunction like and, or, but.
Your other option is to drop all that and just use a semicolon. So for example
here we have "We wandered through the forest most of the day" there's our semicolon, "sunlight
burst through the treetops to light our way". So the semicolon is joining, connecting, these two
independent clauses. The theme or topic of these two independent clauses is very closely related
and iI could replace the semicolon with a comma and so I could say "most of the day
and sunlight burst through the treetops". So that is one way that you see semicolon used.
This is one of the more common ways. You can also use it between independent clauses with
a transition or a transitional word so here we have "Fog continues to cover the airport semicolon
transitional word consequence- consequently" wow that was hard to get out, "all flights have been
grounded". No one can fly so here again we have two independent clauses and this time
semicolon plus a transitional word that is telling us that due to something that's happening before
there's something that has happened now so uh this is another one of the more common ways to see
semicolons used. It sounds a little bit better than saying fog continues to cover the airport and
consequently... um it's a stylistic choice both would be correct but some people won't want to drop the
conjunction in and just use the transition word so you want to use the semicolon in its place. Okay
any questions put them in the comments! Uhm, and the last way that you'll see semicolons used
is to replace commas in a list. I'll say this is something you don't see so often
um because you don't tend to have lists that have uh commas in them so that's really when you're
replacing commas in a list is because the items in your list have commas in them what does that mean
let's look at an example it'll make more sense in our group was Ravi comma a biologist from Colorado
and then instead of putting a comma here we're using a semicolon to show that
one item has been listed and now we're moving on to the next item otherwise it might be unclear
where the division of items exists in the sentence. So to continue, "In our group was Ravi a biologist
from Colorado semicolon Anastasia a chemist from Arizona and then our last semicolon and Bogey a
geologist from California." Sounds like a fun group, so you can see we've got all these commas in here
in our list and to help distinguish between what punctuation is dividing the list and what
punctuation is being used to identify a modifying phrase we're using a semicolon to make it clear.
You'll see this too with like addresses or city and city and states if you're listing
those out but again this is fairly rare okay um especially rare for the GMAT I should say as well.
All right that is all I have on semicolons hopefully it feels- you feel a little bit more
comfortable with this punctuation mark. If you have any questions please do feel free to
ask them in the comments below. I'd be happy to answer them! If you really like listening to me
talk about GMAT stuff I encourage you to subscribe to our GMAT channel and then finally if you have
if you need more help head over to gmat.magoosh.com where there's all kinds
of resources and friendly people to help out all right be excellent to the universe!