Semicolons are a beautiful thing; please do not abuse their usage!

I love grammar.  I'm not very good at naming all of the various components, like there's a split infinitive, or that's a dangling participle, but I have a natural grasp of it.  I just love love love technical writing.  I try to avoid being technical on this blog, because I can stand some improvement in the creative writing arena.  However, I have been working on some documents written by a coworker who "adores" semicolons.  I don't have a problem with this; I, too, love the semicolon.  I do have a problem with his constant improper use of the semicolon.  How can you express adoration for a punctuation mark that you are completely unable to properly use?  I recently provided the following guidance to him, and I'm hoping to see a reduction in frighteningly inaccurate semicolon use:

The key to proper semicolon use in a sentence (as opposed to its use in a list of items) is that it should only be used to split two complete sentences; if you read the portion before the semicolon separately from the portion following the semicolon, they will form two independent, complete sentences. If either side of the semicolon does not form a complete sentence, do not use a semicolon in that location. Check out http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/04/ or http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/semicolons.aspx. As long as they are properly used, go forth and pepper your text with semicolons!! ~T

Another of my tech editing pet peeves is unnecessarily complicated technical writing.  Keep it simple and straightforward and I guarantee you will be much more effective at conveying your idea.  Believe me, complicated sentences do not make a person seem any smarter...quite the contrary!  There is nothing more satisfying to me in technical writing than creating a well-read, rational, easy to follow bit of text without a lot of complicated sentences or jargon.

Stepping down from the soap box for now.  Until next time....