In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy and the semicolon quietly practices the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

Lynne Truss

A period is a stop sign. A semicolon is a rolling stop sign; a comma is merely an amber light.

Andrew Offutt

Used sparingly, the semicolon emphasizes your crucial contrasts; used recklessly, it merely clutters your page.

Sheridan Baker

The semicolon is an ugly bastard, and thus I tend to avoid it. Its utility in patching together two closely related sentences is to be admired, but patches like that should be a make-do solution, to be used when nothing better comes to mind.

Bill Walsh

Punctuation herds words together, keeps others apart. Punctuation directs you how to read, in the way musical notation directs a musician how to play.

Lynne Truss

Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation. Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy you say you're going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your delight is in that power.

Robert Frost

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment, and education. Sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

E.B. White