Sean Patrick Cooper

Kurt:

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country

Virginia, for the win, by example:

She felt herself transfixed by the intensity of her perception; it was his severity; his goodness. I respect you (she addressed silently him in person) in every atom; you are not vain; you are entirely impersonal; you are finer than Mr Ramsay; you are the finest human being that I know; you have neither wife nor child (without any sexual feeling, she longed to cherish that loneliness), you live for science (involuntarily, sections of potatoes rose before her eyes); praise would be an insult to you; generous, pure-hearted, heroic man!

Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

That sentence wouldn’t work at the level it does w/out the transvestite hermaphrodites that give it its rhythm and building power.

Another from Woolf:

She had constantly in mind that comprehensive view of the final proportions of things which I have noticed; for her words were never trivial; but as her strength lessened her respites were fewer; she sank, like an exhausted swimmer, deeper and deeper in the water, and could only at moments descry some restful shore on the horizon to be gained in old age when all this toil was over.

Virginia Woolf, Reminiscences

Like a metaphor, that sentence is born in the combination of distinct images. Think of the metaphor, ‘that desk job was hell.’ The power is in the combination of the separate images of ‘hell’ and ‘desk job.’ Out of their intersection comes the essence of what is being said. Woolf’s use of semicolons is a really efficient way to bring together multiple images and create something greater than the sum of the parts.