I can’t find it in me to use semi-colons. I know they’re useful, in theory. But since when has effective writing been about theory?

With my thirteenth book about to appear, I can honestly say I have rarely felt the need for that little key just to the right of the L. 

Yes, I see you at the back, waving your arm in the air and bursting to tell me that General Practice Cases at a Glance is full of them. But I didn’t put them there. Or, as the copy-editor would have expressed it, “I know; I did not, however, put them there.” They crept in, aided and abetted by someone who knows more than I do about proper punctuation.

Here’s what the University of Oxford Style Guide says:

Each could stand alone as a grammatically complete sentence? Then take off those trainer wheels and let it.

A fellow author and I were discussing punctuation recently.  We’d already exhausted the usual writerly topics such as our word count for the day, and which wine bar was nearest. I think I rashly mentioned semi-colons. Her own editor, like many others, has a fondness for these little squiggles. So, when I admitted to my friend that I try to avoid them at all costs, she asked, “What do you use instead? Colons?”

I nearly dropped my glass of Merlot. I use full stops. Period.

I reckon that, over the years, avoiding semi-colons has saved me huge amounts of ink. The claim may be a bit infantile, rather like the school friend who once calculated that bikini briefs saved her several minutes a week, as compared with wearing full knickers. But she made us laugh.

Why use a punctuation mark that can’t decide if it’s a comma or a full stop? It’s a tasteless hybrid. Unlike mules and hybrid vehicles, however, this one breeds. Give a couple of them house room in your manuscript and you’ll soon have them on every page.

Militant semi-colon enthusiasts can get carried away, so I’m reaching for my flak jacket to say I’ve got very few uses for semi-colons. Here’s one.

Project Semicolon is another.  It’s based on the premise that a semi-colon is used when an author could have ended a sentence but chose not to. As Project Semicolon says, “You are the author and the sentence is your life.”

It’s a global non-profit movement for those who are struggling with mental illness, suicide, addiction and self-injury. You may well have seen semi-colon tattoos, which echo the theme.

There are many moving testimonies on the Project Semicolon blog. Just don’t get too hung up about the grammar.

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At long last, Hampstead Fever breaks out on Thursday. And the cover’s pretty.