; - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

See also: ؛ [U+061B ARABIC SEMICOLON]

A full stop (.) above a comma (,).

Derives from the punctus versus.

The Italian printer Aldus Manutius established the practice of using the semicolon mark to separate words of opposed meaning, and to indicate interdependent statements. The earliest, general use of the semicolon in English was in 1591.

; (English name semicolon)

1. Indicates a pause longer than the comma and shorter than a period/full stop.
2. Separates items in a list where the list items themselves include commas.

   Guests at the summit included David Cameron, the British Prime Minister; Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor; and François Hollande, the French President.

3. Represents two eyes vertically aligned, the lower one winking, in order to form emoticons.
4. (programming) Marks the end of a statement in some programming languages.

   <?php echo '<p>Hello World</p>'; ?>

5. (speech therapy) Used to separate the year and month of a child's age.

• In French, all composite symbols (i.e. ;, :, ! and ?) should be preceded by a non-breaking space, except ! and ? in Canadian French, where no preceding space is needed.
• In Greek, this symbol is a question mark, and the role of semicolon is fulfilled by U+0387 ·, the άνω τελεία (áno teleía, “upper stop”).

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:;.

• & ;

•   Semicolon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Punctuation

;

1. ? (the Greek question mark)

• (Greek-script letters) Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω
• (non-Classical letters) Ϝ ϝ, Ͷ ͷ, Ͱ ͱ, Ϻ ϻ, Ϙ ϙ, Ͳ ͳ
• (punctuation) · ;
• (diacritics) ᾿ ῾ ◌́ ◌̀ ῀ ¨

;

1. ? (the Greek question mark)

   Με συγχωρείτε· πού είναι οι τουαλέτες;

   Me synchoreíte; poú eínai oi toualétes;

   Excuse me; where are the toilets?

• While there is a specific character for solely the Greek question mark (; – U+037E), the regular semicolon (U+003B) is preferred.
• In Greek, a semicolon is represented by · (U+0387), named the άνω τελεία (áno teleía, “upper stop”).

• IPA^(key): /ʔ/

;

1. glottal stop with low lexical tone.

The punctuation mark is separated from the preceding word by a space.

Low tone is written ⟨꞉⟩ with any other final.