Day 213: Use semicolons to separate items in a series when those items have commas.

We are going to put the following three items in a series:

 
  1. Fido, my friend’s dog
  2. Spot, my dog
  3. Bowser

 

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Now, here’s the sentence with these three items in a series:

“I love dogs. My favorite dogs are Fido, my friend’s dog, Spot, my dog, and Bowser.”

This series seems to describe 5 dogs: 1) Fido, 2) Spot, 3) Bowser, 4) my dog, and 5) my friend’s dog. Each comma in a series sets off another item, so this series seems to include 5 dogs. Of course, we can guess that my dog is named Spot and that my friend’s dog is named Fido, which gives us 3 dogs, but this is only guessing. The sentence is not clear.

Those extra commas could indicate a different dog in the series, or they could indicate that we are re-naming the preceding word or phrase (e.g., “Fido” equals “my friend’s dog”). To make this clear, we use semicolons to separate the items. When we do this, the semicolons, not the commas, identify each item in the series. This gives us the following revision with 3 dogs.

“I love dogs. My favorite dogs are Fido, my friend’s dog; Spot, my dog; and Bowser.”

Now we only have 3 dogs, which is correct.