Is there such a thing as too many semi-colons?

So I've noticed that in a lot of my writing I tend to use a lot of semi-colons. Sometimes I use three or four per paragraph... It just depends.

Now, I've had teachers rave about semi-colons and about how they absolutely love them, but I've never heard a teacher talk about there being too many of them. They're usually trying to force the class to put at least one of them into their writing.

So I want to know if you think there is such a thing as too many semi-colons. If I use too many of them will my writing look bad or be hard to read?

For the record, my pages aren't littered with tons of semi-colons. I don't use hundreds of them, I just think I use quite a few more than most people do.

Thank you in advance!

Short answer, YES.

Semicolons have a time and place, namely to help distinguish between commas in lists with appositives, and to connect two closely related (but otherwise grammatically separate) sentences. Using them for purposes outside that is overkill and semicolon abuse.

A lot of people don't know how to use semicolons properly, and for those that do know how to use them, it's really, really annoying to see.

Use your semicolons wisely and well. It's one thing to use a lot of semicolons properly, and another matter entirely to misuse a lot of semicolons.

Thank you for this.

I only use them to connect two sentences that are closely related (namely because I am unsure how to use them in lists...). I'll try to cut back a tad.

It's actually really easy.

Frank, the boisterous baker from Bakerstown; Jim, the brawling blacksmith renowned for his skill with a tire iron; the mysterious stranger who lurked in chimneys, whose name was actually Bob; the sinister seamstress, Sally, who wins wars by sabotaging underwear; and Molly, the pirate, went off on a quest to save the world.

The semicolons there just act as an extra-special comma that makes understanding what description describes which person so much easier.

Thank you so much. No one has ever really told me how to do it before, but it seems pretty simple now. And that was an awesome example, too.