It was reported in the Guardian this week that the French regret the decline of the semicolon and blame it on the increasing use of English. See Céline's translation weblog and Baroque in Hackney.
The French term is point-virgule, the German Semikolon or Strichpunkt.
Why is it not Punktstrich, you ask? Well, I have seen a German writing a semicolon, and they really did do the comma before the full stop.
Confirmations and even denials welcome.
05-04-08
Semicolon/Strichpunkt
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Puolipisteen nussimista
Suomessa välimerkin kanssa parittelemisella tarkoitetaan tavallisimmin pilkun nussimista eikä sitä yleensä yhdistetä kieleen ja kulttuuriin. Ranskan viimeaikoijen kuumin kulttuurillinen kiista liittyy välimerkkeihin; siellä nussitaan nyt puolipistettä....
Suomessa välimerkin kanssa parittelemisella tarkoitetaan tavallisimmin pilkun nussimista eikä sitä yleensä yhdistetä kieleen ja kulttuuriin. Ranskan viimeaikoijen kuumin kulttuurillinen kiista liittyy välimerkkeihin; siellä nussitaan nyt puolipistettä....
Weblog: Larkon havaintoja
Tracked: Apr 05, 19:10
Tracked: Apr 05, 19:10
No, I do the I before the dot. So am I to assume that German speakers see the dot in a semi-colon in the same way as a dot or an umlaut?
"No, I do the I before the dot. So am I to assume that German speakers see the dot in a semi-colon in the same way as a dot or an umlaut?" That's an interesting question. I have always considered it as, as I've said, perhaps a special kind of comma, but then I really never thought about it all that much.
I am sure this habit pre-dates my knowledge of German (I learned my first German word at age 13 - I could write long before that, and I was almost 18 before I trod German soil for the first time in my life).
Subjectively, it "feels" like I am putting the larger symbols on paper first to make sure that I have enough space for them, and leaving the smaller bit (the dot) to last, because it is easy to find space for it.
I have assimilated one or two superficial features of German handwriting (notably for 1, 7 and Z), but my handwriting in general does not look German in style, and I am rock-solid convinced that my semicolon craft is British in origin (and interested to learn that there is another British convention).
At the moment, there is reportedly a Spanish/English mega-contract row over this very point: (note the colon and not semi-colon)
'In the event of disputes, the parties shall first refer the contentious point to a court of law; and in (the) final instance (en ultima instancia) to the ICC in Paris as an arbitration body'. The Spanish, as written, may mean the ICC is the ultimate arbiter over Courts of Law*;* or, as punctuated, the ICC is an alternative avenue, as arbitration is meant to be. One party is complaining that the other party went straight to ICC arbitration and claims the courts should have been resorted to first.
To my mind, too, the semicolon is somewhat of a comma with an additional dot to it. So I feel it would be natural to write the comma first.
I can see the logic of writing the longer comma first. And I have no memory of being told how to write it - and Victor writes it differently from me, and guest writes it differently from other German speakers I have encountered. The only evidence of sequence I have is for i and t, when we talk about 'dotting your i's and crossing your t's', which makes me think (perhaps incorrectly) that the upstroke is there first.