[beezlebroxxxxxx]

This is to our disadvantage. Semicolons are useful because they allow for the long, patient, elaboration of complex ideas in a single sentence. In fiction, in particular, they can also function akin to a jumpcut in cinema, or like montage editing. Many of the incredible scenes in a book like Flaubert's Mme Bovary get their feel from the way he slams units of prose together with semicolons rather than the trudge of periods and short sentences. The same is true of Proust, or Nabokov, or Hemingway, who was way more profligate with semicolons than the meme-ish idea of his prose which has become popular (he was mocked for his use of them in The Sun Also Rises for example).

Unfortunate, really. Everything now is supposed to be distilled into these short and clippy sentences and paragraphs. Like newspaper prose. Modern prose fiction is often so anodyne and lifeless; a semicolon, with the freedom to smash things together in fun ways, would do most some good.