Kurt Vonnegut

[Ditchy McAbandonpants]

To be honest, as much as I use colons and semicolons, I'm not absolutely crystal clear on the rules myself; I was taught them once, and ever since I just use them where they "feel" correct to me. I haven't been called out on it, so I guess I must be doing it right most of the time. My understanding is basically that you use colons when you want to join two clauses that wouldn't make sense separately, like when you introduce a list, or the second clause explains or qualifies the first; the semicolon you use if the two clauses are gramatically independent but you want to suggest a connection between them anyway. Dashes...uh, they're a grey area. ??? I try to avoid using them, but I often do, and I think I do it in places where I really ought to be using a colon, semicolon or a bracket.

Or something.

Actually, just ignore me, because I might not even be making the slightest bit of sense. Here's a site I was just looking at to try and explain this; it didn't clear things up totally, but there's a little punctuation usage quiz at the bottom which might help. I empathise with you, though; whatever Kurt said, I'm too set in my semicolon-using ways to stop now...

EDIT - Oh my lord, I just realised how insanely boring this must sound. Did I really spend all that time talking about fricking punctuation marks? I need to get out more...back to Kurt Vonnegut, people, sorry.