Semicolon and I are best of friends, but that wasn't always the case. When I was in highschool--and I shudder to think of this--I actually said "the semicolon is a superfluous punctuation mark; any old parasitic semicolon can be replaced with a respectable period," if not in so many words (or punctuation marks!). Since then, I've come to appreciate the level of nuance that the semicolon makes possible. Semicolon and I are inseperable . . .