Semicolon Update

In an article on WebMD on good health habits, Dulce Zamora wrote:

Yet, even with so much scientific support that breakfast does the body good; many people still make excuses not to eat in the morning.

A semicolon should be used to indicate END punctuation. In other words, it should only come after a complete idea. A comma is used to indicate a pause within a complete idea or a pause after an introductory element that is not a complete idea.

In this example sentence, the main idea (complete thought) is "many people still make excuses not to eat in the morning," and "people" is the subject of the sentence. Everything that comes before "many people" is just introductory material and should be set off by a comma.

The writer was probably remembering an old school rule that says something about using a semicolon to set off an element if a comma already appears within that element of the sentence, but that rule does not apply here. The phrase "even with so much scientific support that breakfast does the body good" should simply be set off by a comma. Therefore, the sentence should read as follows:

Yet, even with so much scientific support that breakfast does the body good, many people still make excuses not to eat in the morning.

I hope this helps clarify the semicolon dilemma. I also hope you take Dulce Zamora's good advice and eat a healthy breakfast every morning.