Endangered Punctuation

I was hanging out with my friend the other day and she told me a story about this college professor. You see, the first day of class this professor wrote this sentence on the board: "A woman without her man is nothing." He then asked the students to add the appropriate punctuation.
The men came up with this sentence: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."
The women wrote this: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

My favorite of the two is, naturally, the women's, but I'm not here to talk about feminism, today. What I want to talk about is punctuation; more specifically, the use, or lack thereof, of the semi-colon.

I don't know if you're aware, but the semi-colon is an endangered species.

I'm not kidding! Fewer and fewer people continue to use it in everyday conversation; obviously I'm not talking verbal, and even less people actually know how to use it correctly.
It's actually quite depressing. I mean I didn't even learn the correct usage of the poor, little semi-colon in school. I only learned because my eighth grade teacher suggested that our class read this book called "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"- it talks about the right way to use punctuation and shares anecdotes about punctuation mishaps. I, being the grammar nerd that I am, bought and read the book. It was actually really funny and I learned quite a bit from it. Now I'm not saying that you should all go out and read this book, because honestly you probably won't find it as interesting as I did.

Anyway, I decided to inform you all of the correct use of the semi-colon and then hopefully, armed with this knowledge, you will be more likely to use them.

Let's begin with the basics- a definition, courtesy of dictionary.com (my go-to place for all things vocabulary):

N. Semi-colon: "The punctuation mark (;) used to indicate a major division in a sentence where a more distinct separation is felt between clauses or items on a list than is indicated by a comma, as between the two clauses of a compound sentence."

In simpler terms, a semi-colon is for when you have two related, complete thoughts and so instead of having two separate sentences for them, you put a semi-colon in between.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about-
Bad example: I love "The Sound of Music". I also enjoy "Wicked.
Do you see how disconnected that looks? It doesn't read very well either; it makes you stop reading, pause, and then pick back up again. Not very nice.

Good example: I love "The Sound of Music"; I also enjoy "Wicked".
Now that is what I call a well written sentence! (Because I am totally, in no way, even the tiniest bit biased. HA.)

There are other ways to use the semi-colon, but I feel as though that might be too much information for you to take in, so I'll just leave it at that and hope that at least a one of you comes away from reading this blog knowing how to correctly use the semi-colon; perhaps you may even use one someday!

I suppose that's it for now. Good luck with all your future punctuational endeavors! SAVE THE SEMI-COLON! Promote its usage and spread awareness of that fact that humanity is slowly, but surely, forgetting its existence!

Oh and I suppose I should wish you a happy rest of summer vacation! Well, for America at any rate.(I've only got a mere two weeks left. Ahhhhh!)