...who created them anway...

So, working at a high school, I regularly see students in dating relationships.  Some last about a week.  Some individuals seem to always have someone new by their side as they walk to class.  Yet, some are inseparable.

At my school there are some couples that are almost iconic.  Everyone knows they are together.  If and when the break-ups happen it might as well be front page news in the Times.  One of these such couples where I work gets quite a bit attention.  Many of us teachers even enjoy teasing them regularly.

Here I will call them Sarah and John.  Don't worry, that's not their real names, nor anything close to them.

Today I was teaching an ACT prep class.  The subject was English.  At one point we were discussing some basic punctuation rules the students need to be familiar with for this college entrance exam.  So, we were discussing run-ons.  A sample sentence was on the board and we were identifying possible corrections.  Naturally, we discussed one possible solution as the semicolon (;).

Now, I teach this subject often.  In fact, this is the ninth time this year I have taught this exact same lesson.  But it was the first time I had this response to the innocent, unsuspecting semicolon.  One frustrated student in the class responds with Why the heck would anyone use a semicolon?

Of course I'm thinking Haven't you been listening to anything we've been discussing the past few minutes? Obviously we use it to correct a run-on, to split independent clauses!

But before I could respond, she continues:  Who created them anyway?  Why wouldn't we just put in a period and make it two sentences?  This is so stupid!


I needed to come in with a quick response before the poor punctuation mark lost all chances with this girl.  Well, sometimes sentences are so closely related that we don't want to split them up.  She wasn't buying it; I could see it.  The rest of the class was watching me, waiting for me to say something convincing before they wrote off this option for good.  Then it came to me:  Well, some sentences are like Sarah and John; they just can't be split up.  No matter how badly someone may want to split them up, they just seem to belong together.


Smiles and laughter.
I think they get it.
Semicolons might just stand a chance in the future when that class corrects run-ons; it was a close one though.
Those iconic relationships might be good for something after all.