The semi-colon

The semi-colon's place in my life is interesting. As someone who frankly didn't give a toss about writing anything in school the rules of semi-colon use passed me by with, I would have to say, no apparent negative impact on my life. More recently, I think either when writing my college Thesis or when I was doing my professional practice exams report I had to use the damn things. I asked my brother, who lets just say knows about such things, about the correct usage of this little grammatical pause (or possibly half pause?)When the lecture finished days later I had retained a little of the fundementals and embarked upon a new semi-coloned life with renewed vigour. As I used it with increasing frequency in long winded legal reports, snotty letters, planning appeals and the like in the following years I began to get rather obsessed with using what I now considered to be this little essential piece of punctuation whatever it is thingy. It became all-consuming this desire to include multiple semi-colons in my written work. I felt my letters etc never reached the required level of condescention unless sentences were at least 5 lines long with at least 4 semi-colons used to up the intellectual level. Then recently I had to use one of the little buggers in a situation that was beyond my level of semi-colonic expertise and had to contact the literary one again for advice. (I think it may have been something to do with capitals or some such reasonable question. I was treated like a leper by he who knows about words. It was clear that my usage had become complacent and confused. I had it seems been taking the little things for granted, assuming I knew how to use them. But no, no more will I flourish them around in my tomes; they will not grace my written work any more; I will not use them again for fear of further humiliation; I am free.

(In Dertopia the use of the semi-colon is compulsory)