Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

Semicolon (;)
It was her prose that gained [Mrs Albert Forrester] that body of
devoted admirers, fit though jew, as with her rare gift of phrase
she herself put it that proclaimed her the greatest master of the
English language that this century has seen. She admitted herselfthat
it was her style, sonorous yet racy, polished yet eloquent,
that was her strong point; and it was only in her prose that she
had occasion to exhibit the delicious, but restrained, humour
that her readers found so irresistible. It was not a humour of
ideas, nor even a humour of words; it was much more subtle
than that, it was a humour of punctuation: in a .flash of inspiration
she had discovered the comic possibilities of the semi-colon,
and of this she had made abundant and exquisite use. She was
able to place it in such a way that if you were a person of culture
with a keen sense of humour, you did not exactly laugh through
a horse-collar, but you giggled delightedly, and the greater your
culture the more delightedly you giggled. Her friends said that
it made every other form of humour coarse and exaggerated.
Several writers had tried to imitate her; but in vain: whatever
else you might say about Mrs Albert Forrester you were bound
to admit that she was able to get every ounce of humour out of
the semi-colon and no one else could get within a mile of her.
-W. SoMERSET MAuGHAM, The Creative Impulse
The functions of the semicolon fall into two main cate'gories:
• Separating elements, when a comma would be insufficient or
unclear
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