Dashes and Semicolons

Okay, so my biggest pet peeve when it comes to literature is the overuse of dashes and semicolons where commas could be easily placed. Dashes and semicolons have often been overused in that sense because, frankly, they look kind of neat and professional, but needed? No. I don't believe that people speak with semicolons in their punctuation. If you were to really read aloud a sentence that equipped a semicolon it would feel very awkward to read, wouldn't it?

And dashes are much then same except some use dashes as an excuse to forget about commas and change it up. That is not good for commas are a much better punctuation mark then the dash.

~The.Dreamwalker

One thing, though. Semicolons are used to replace periods. If you replaced one with a comma, you'd have a comma splice. (Dashes, however, can be used to replace both.)

I have an aversion to too many dashes because they get to loose their effect if used too often. Since their main reason of use is emphesis, if you use them too often they don't show emphesis anymore.

Semicolons are only useful when joining two related sentences. Sometimes it's better to have related sentences broken up with a period to get a good effect, though. I usually find they can string things that are too long together and suddenly the sentence is a paragraph long with only one period.

But, usually, simple is better.

I definitly agree with that Rosey, but I was stating more so that people overuse dashes and semicolons. You are right about the periods as well and in my carelessness I seem to have gotten that part wrong so for that I thank you. I just think people find it way to conveniant to use dashes and semicolons. I dont banish them completely but I used maybe two or three semicolons per chapter at tops and a set of dashes once, but I have seen many people using dashes nearly every sentence and it kills me a little inside XD.

~The.Dreamwalker