The semicolon, 'the most feared punctuation on Earth,' is in decline; does it matter?

It's divisive; it cleaves; it drives some people crazy. The writer Kurt Vonnegut said of the semicolon: It's showy; it's chiefly used to show you've been to college. More than two-thirds of young Americans claim they know how to use it; about the same number, tests proved, actually don't.

The semicolon is a wily punctuation mark. Stronger, more thoughtful and less understood than the humble comma, it separates items in a detailed list or complicated parts of a sentence.

Here's how the semicolon split breaks down:

Graphics by Ramon Padilla.

This story was updated to fix a typo.