The Semicolon: A Completely Unnecessary Necessity

 

Ah, the semicolon; the punctuation mark that shows up like a dinner guest who wasn’t technically invited but brought a really good bottle of wine. You don’t know where to seat it, but you also don’t want it to feel bad. After all, it’s trying its best to be useful.

Nobody really knows what to do with a semicolon. You’ve probably seen one; you’ve probably even used one … accidentally, while reaching for the comma. But ask ten writers why they used it, and you’ll get ten versions of “It felt right.” Which is code for “I panicked.”

The Case for Team Semicolon

In theory, the semicolon is a workhorse of nuance. It connects two closely related thoughts, thoughts that deserve more intimacy than a period allows, but less clinginess than a comma demands.

Example:

I have a big presentation tomorrow; I need to prepare my notes tonight.

It’s the punctuation equivalent of saying, “These two ideas are dating, but not ready to move in together.”

The semicolon also plays well with fancy words like however, moreover, and nevertheless. When you see one of those in the wild, the semicolon often lurks nearby, like a proud punctuation parent:

I was going to skip the party; however, free tacos changed my mind.

And when lists get messy, like that time your aunt tried to describe her “simple” potato salad recipe in a single sentence, the semicolon steps in to sort out the chaos:

The picnic included sandwiches with ham, turkey, and cheese; chips, both regular and barbecue; and a cooler full of questionable lemonade.

See? It’s the Marie Kondo of punctuation. Everything suddenly sparks clarity.

The Case for Team “Why Bother?”

But here’s the thing: no one needs a semicolon. You can live a long, full, grammatically respectable life without ever touching one. Commas and periods already do 99% of the heavy lifting. The semicolon, meanwhile, just sits there in the middle of your keyboard, smirking like it’s part of an exclusive club.

People think using semicolons makes their writing sophisticated. Maybe it does. But it can also make your sentence look like it’s trying too hard, like a guy at a poetry slam wearing sunglasses indoors.

And if you use them too often? Congratulations, your prose now sounds like a Victorian telegram. Stop.

The Beautiful Contradiction

So what’s the verdict? The semicolon is both utterly unnecessary and undeniably elegant. It’s the punctuation world’s middle child: overlooked, slightly dramatic, but secretly brilliant. It asks us to slow down, to think about the relationship between ideas, to linger in the space between this and that.

Good writing lives in that space. Which means, like it or not, we probably need the semicolon, if only to remind us that language isn’t just about what we say; it’s about how we connect the dots.

Use it sparingly. Use it bravely. And for heaven’s sake, don’t use it to look smart.

That’s what em-dashes are for.

Stand Up and Speak Up

 

You're there to get your clients to a level they wouldn’t be able to reach on their own.

That’s why they hired you.

If they were just looking for someone to complete tasks, they could find someone cheaper to do the job.

So stand up and speak up.

When it’s your turn to have an opinion, have one.

But what if I don't have one?

If there's a specific reason you don’t have one, explain that.

Just make sure the reason you don't have one isn't because you’re avoiding conflict.

Why and When to Use Personification in Advertising

Brands are constantly searching for ways to stand out, connect, and persuade. One creative device that consistently proves effective, when used strategically, is personification. Giving human traits to a product, object, or idea might sound like a literary trick best left in the pages of children’s books, but in advertising, it can unlock surprisingly powerful results.

Why Use Personification?

1. It Builds Trust Through Relatability

At its core, personification makes things feel familiar. When we see a juice bottle that “asks” us to give it a shake before opening, it suddenly becomes more than packaging, it becomes a partner in our morning routine. A bag that “invites” you to unzip its front pocket feels less like a product and more like a helpful guide. This kind of interaction can increase the perceived trustworthiness of the brand. By humanizing the product or the message, advertisers can lower the barrier to belief. It's no longer a cold, corporate claim; it's something (or someone) you can relate to.

2. It Grabs Attention Through Direct Appeal

A key challenge in advertising is simply being noticed. Personification is an attention magnet because it disrupts expectations. When a product “speaks” or behaves like a person, it activates the part of our brain that’s wired to engage with social cues. Whether it’s a sponge that’s “tired” after cleaning or a car that “wants” to go off-road, the ad shifts from being a statement to an interaction. This moment of surprise or amusement is often enough to make someone stop scrolling, watch a little longer, or lean in.

3. It Drives Action With Playful Prompting

Good advertising doesn’t just inform, it nudges. Personification can create a more natural and memorable way to suggest a behavior. “Shake me before you open!” is more engaging than “Shake well.” “Unzip me to explore inside” feels more inviting than “See internal compartments.” By turning instructions into playful prompts, personification helps move people from passive viewing to active engagement.

When to Use It

Personification isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, it works best in specific contexts:

• For everyday products that benefit from charm. Household items, personal care products, or packaged foods can easily feel boring or overly functional. Personification adds warmth and voice to the otherwise mundane.
  
  
• When you want to teach or instruct. Complex or multi-step products often come with instructions that consumers skim over. By turning those instructions into dialogue or personality, you make the message more digestible and memorable.
  
  
• In campaigns that rely on emotional storytelling. Brands looking to build loyalty or shift perceptions can use personification to forge an emotional bond. Think of the M&M’s characters or the talking insurance gecko... they become more than mascots; they’re brand personalities.

Final Thoughts

In a world of data-driven targeting and algorithmic precision, it might feel odd to talk about something as whimsical as personification. But it’s precisely that human touch, that spark of creativity and emotion, that often turns a good ad into a great one.

Used wisely, personification helps your product speak not just to the consumer, but with them.

The Automated Lie: AI and Your Devices Don't Love You

Your Apple Watch just told you to "you're making tremendous progress this week." 

ChatGPT started it's response to your query by complimenting you on your  insightful question. 

LinkedIn just offered you congratulations on your work anniversary. 

And somewhere in your kitchen drawer, yesterday's fortune cookie slip still promises that "good things are coming your way."

All lies. Beautiful, well-intentioned, algorithmically-optimized lies.

Here's the uncomfortable truth we've all agreed to ignore: kindness doesn't scale. You can't compress genuine human care into a push notification. You can't reduce authentic encouragement to a randomized string of motivational text. Yet somehow, we've built an entire digital ecosystem designed to simulate the very thing it fundamentally cannot produce: sincerity.

Think about the last time someone genuinely surprised you with kindness. Not the predictable "Happy Birthday" post that Facebook reminded them to write, but real, spontaneous human warmth. Maybe it was a coworker who noticed you seemed stressed, or a stranger who helped carry your groceries, or your kid who drew you a picture just because. That moment had weight because it was unscheduled, unscripted, and irreplaceable.

Now compare that to your fitness tracker congratulating you for standing up. The emptiness is almost insulting.

We've become so starved for positive reinforcement that we'll accept it from anything ... even machines that wouldn't know genuine encouragement if it were written directly into their source code. We've trained ourselves to feel a tiny dopamine hit when our phones tell us we're doing great, as if a device that can't distinguish between a sunrise and a screensaver somehow has insight into our worth.

The cruelest part isn't that these automated affirmations are fake. It's that they're training us to accept fake as sufficient. Every time we smile at a generic "You've got this!" notification, we're lowering the bar for what counts as human connection. We're teaching ourselves that engagement algorithms understand us better than the people in our lives.

Real kindness is inconvenient. It shows up at the wrong time. It costs something. It can't be A/B tested or optimized for engagement. It doesn't come with analytics showing how it performed across different user segments. It just is ... messy, imperfect, and irreplaceably human.

So the next time your smartwatch tries to coach you through a breathing exercise, or your video call platform tells you you're "amazing," remember what you're really being offered: the digital equivalent of a participation trophy. A hollow simulation of care from something that has never cared about anything.

Save your appreciation for the humans who show up without being programmed to do so. They're rarer than you think, and infinitely more valuable than anything your devices will ever tell you about yourself.

The machines can keep their compliments. I'll take the real thing, thank you very much.