Use a semi-colon for rhythm.

As we all know, many men got no rhythm anyway; so they bull ahead - comma, comma, comma - and think everyone's gotta do what they say.

There are beats in lines, beats between thoughts; use a semi-colon to make beats work.

Bada bing; bada boom.

This is perhaps the most content-free article in Salon's history; you must be really proud of yourselves (see what I did there). What's next, gender bias in grapho-numeric synesthesia? Is this a three-day weekend?

An En Dash, maybe; an Em Dash, never.

Semicolons rock. As does nuance.

Okay. I love Broadsheet dearly, but this is ridiculous. I'm with Santos on this one.

When I first started posting on-line I still used the occasional semi-colon. It's funny. I did begin to sense it seemed prissy. I now use a dash. Too many dashes. I've also learned to keep sentences shorter and with no more than one clause, otherwise expect to be ignored. My Catholic school English class teachers would not be pleased.

I may be mistaken, but I thought semicolons are somewhere between a comma and a period: a signal to pause, consider and proceed; it is a thoughtful punctuation, and if it be feminine we should certainly be proud to revel in this mark of femininity!

The person I know who uses the semicolon most is a man, but he uses it willy-nilly, like pin the semicolon on the sentence. Perhaps he is not appropriately in touch with his feminine side.

I not only use semi-colons regularly, I use them text messages!

What's a guy to do?

Dirigo is right; it's all about, you know, rhythm.

It's also about hierarchy. You need the semicolon to promote those commas between clauses when the clauses themselves contain commas.

Of course, the combination of semicolon and dash, together in one sentence -- just for fun -- can truly tickle; and if these gender surmises are right, then why not bring them together for a little romp?

Watch a female talking head and note how much more affect plays across her face. You'll see the same phenomenon in your female friends, saleswomen, and female service workers. Women are expected to emote! You know!

I'm not even going to read this article; this is more Salon fear mongering. I assume from the headline that, girls contract this disease more than men. How many people are actually afflicted with this condition? I can't imagine the pain, embarrassment and discomfort semicolons cause. Hopefully, we can all come together as a nation and raise the publics awareness by wearing brown wristbands. ............Everyone is entitled to a complete colon.

Another rhythm master heard from.

And you're absolutely right, saying the big, bad semi is great, actually essential, in separating long clauses, or lists, where commas appear. How to make the thoughts work?

Also, about rhythm, I find, as an actor with a "speak the speech" sensibility - as one who likes to hear the sounds as I write - that the mighty semi helps text roll off the tongue onto the page.

But that won't make the grammar police happy.

They would do well to just listen, and find the beats within the lines.

The harmonics. They're in there!

I'm also aware that they mean different things. We could of course use only one punctuation mark -- say, a left parenthesis -- if we wanted, or no punctuation at all; but we would lose much of the richness of written language thereby. The idea that a perfectly good punctuation mark should be avoided because of its "gender" strikes me as bizarre.

Standby. You're on the air. Buenos noches Senores y Senoras. Bienvenidos. La primera pregunta es: Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife? Well, let's see. My guess is that a pineapple is more macho than a knife. Si! Correcto! Pineapple es mas macho que knife. La segunda pregunta es: Que es mas macho, lightbulb o schoolbus? Uh, lightbulb? No! Lo siento, Schoolbus es mas macho que lightbulb. Gracias...

of course, the umlaut is the most macho of all, but perhaps that's an argument for another day.

Pauses and nuance, that's what we need. The directness of the simple, non-punctuated sentence: nothing but a bunch of words between two periods. When I took the 'academic writing' class, they told me to write with short sentences, to make my claims and statements stand out more clearly. Oh, how much better is the style of my native Portuguese, in which you're actively encouraged to start long sentences and add more and more nuance, till you've built a comfy cloud to step on... But I digress. Basically, semicolons are great, and I don't see anything feminine about them--except perhaps Svutlana's wink, and still.

What is it with people and their obsession with things colonic? Scared/not of being gay; have to be only 'semi' colonic; or manly periods and hetero full colonics only?

Me, I am fine with my colon; semi or otherwise; why so many have to obsess over a simple natural function is beyond me; but of course, colonliness is next to godliness; but then, I am expressing some kind of colonialist mentality; or something like that.

Commas; faugh; the respite of weaklings.

Most Americans believe a semi-colon is an uber-comma; good writers know it is a less-final period. Anybody can write perfectly well without any semi-colons whatsoever. If in doubt, do not use a semi-colon. Use a period instead.

We have a much bigger problem with apostrophes. Writers must use apostrophes, but too many "writers" use them too often. If I had a nickel for every bad apostrophe, I could pay back the national debt on bad semi-colons, and still be rich.

Semi-colons are girlish only in the sense that the truth is girlish. Don't confuse me with the facts; damn the torpedoes.

...truly, partners in crime.

I freebase semicolons in my own writing; complexity is beautiful. If that's a gendered statement -- perhaps abetted my use of a feminine word like 'beautiful', or perhaps undermined by a masculine drug reference (drugs are masculine, right?) -- then I might have to revise my given nickname of the "Grammar Hammer." After all, one can't be girlie and hammer-like simultaneously, can one? After all, everything in life -- even punctuation marks! -- should be reducible to some kind of binary concept that can correlate to gender, right? Right?!?!

Oh, wait...