I would rather die than read thirty poorly written essays where very sentence is three paragraphs long. I presume that teachers feel the same.
It's easier to just tell the kids to avoid writing excessively long sentences. They can do that when they get good. In the meantime, it's best if they keep it simple and avoid the many pitfalls of overly complicated sentence structures.
:this:
It's not helpful to tell students that actually the real rule is you can do whatever you want if you're a good writer
cuz you aren't an old dead philosopher. a lot of received academic writing wisdom is bad, but "avoid comma splices and run-on sentences" isn't.
You have to learn the rules before you are allowed to break them.
I, and everyone else I know with ADHD, writes multi paragraph long run on sentences. I, and everyone else I know with ADHD, hated English class for that specific reason. Also rough drafts and outlines and the pre outline word cloud or whatever we always had to do, just let me do my final draft, screw up some of the spelling so I can turn in a rough draft, and then turn in the original as the final draft. Also wtf was up with grading rough drafts? That was so dumb, like the whole point is it wasn't perfect, that shouldn't affect my grades
If you start talking about semi-colons I might have to start calling you Ben Shapiro...
Semicolons are used to combine two independent clauses (complete sentences, basically) without having to use a conjunction
I hate capitalism because it kills people.
I hate capitalism; it kills people.
Ideally you avoid this if the relationship between the clauses would be unclear without the conjunction
A semicolon is basically a super-comma. When you want a comma, but more-so, you use a semicolon; it is showboating though. They're more than commas but less than periods.
a semicolon generally implies that one independent clause leads to the next. in fact if i were your editor i'd argue against your usage there, since the second clause is a counter to the first.
They're used to connect related independent clauses. My two clauses are related, the second clause is adding nuance to the first. The two clauses don't need to be saying the same things.
