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Re:Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty... by denton-scratch on Monday September 19, 2022 @09:06AM (#32897776)
An awful lot of people don't know how to use or interpret semicolons, including lawyers and judges. The best use of semicolons is to designate the timing of prose that is supposed to be spoken (or read as if it was meant to be spoken). In that sense a semicolon is a bit like a comma - it denotes timing and "breath".

When they are used to group ideas, commas and semicolons tend to encourage long, complex utterances that might be ambiguous, and at any rate are harder to parse. If it's important that an utterance be clear, just use simple language.

Expressing complex ideas in simple language is hard - you have to get the ideas perfectly clear in your head. If you still can't express those ideas in simple language, try again to get them clear. Don't draft any laws until you can do that.

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