My question: The dreaded semicolon. When I work in MSWord, it is forever telling me to replace a comma with a semicolon. I usually obey the MSWord wizard because I don’t seem to know what I’m doing. Is there some way to tell (some rule of thumb?) if what I have is two sentences—that should be broken up rather than use a semicolon? Thanks for your time. Billie A. Williams The Capricorn Goat Billie, A lot of writers find the semicolon mysterious. I’d like to see you take charge of your writing and not let the MS Word wizard boss you around about it. In order to do that, you need to view punctuation as a set of communication tools that you can use to signal your reader how you want them to interpret what you’ve written. The three basic punctuation tools are a comma, a semicolon, and a period. I often think of them as traffic signs. When I see a comma, I slow down. A semicolon tells me to yield, and a period shouts, “Stop.” It’s that simple. Think of one of your sentences wh...