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I've tried to use semicolons in academic and tertiary level writing in English. The teachers marked them as errors; eventually I desisted. I believe students today have no idea of how to use a semicolon because most teachers themselves are absolutely clueless. Really disappointing.

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While descriptively the decreasing occurrence is noteworthy... prescriptively, well, it's just a punctuation mark. If you're writing it's just yet another tool at your disposal. It deserves neither the blah blah praise of the author, nor the assumptions Kurt von Yoghurt vomits.