- Joined
- Oct 24, 2011
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- 23,135
- Reaction score
- 10,908
- Location
- Where faults collide
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- doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
It's my understanding that you use semicolons to separate elements in a list when the items in said list contain commas.
So you use semicolons for a list like this one:
I've flown to Sacramento, San Francisco and LA in California; Portland, Salem and Eugene in Oregon; and Syracuse, New York and Newark on the East coast.
But what if some of the elements in the list contain commas and some don't? Say:
I've flown to Sacramento, San Francisco and LA in California; Portland and Eugene in Oregon, and Syracuse in New York.
Is it correct to use semicolons (as I have done) only to separate list elements that contain commas, or would I use semicolons for every element in the list?
I'm not finding much help with this on the web.
So you use semicolons for a list like this one:
I've flown to Sacramento, San Francisco and LA in California; Portland, Salem and Eugene in Oregon; and Syracuse, New York and Newark on the East coast.
But what if some of the elements in the list contain commas and some don't? Say:
I've flown to Sacramento, San Francisco and LA in California; Portland and Eugene in Oregon, and Syracuse in New York.
Is it correct to use semicolons (as I have done) only to separate list elements that contain commas, or would I use semicolons for every element in the list?
I'm not finding much help with this on the web.