 Hello and welcome back to yet another GCSE revision video. Now, guys, in this lesson, I want to go over a punctuation, which I would argue is a grade nine punctuation that actually very few GCSE students understand. Number one, they don't quite understand why writers use them. And number two, most importantly, when it comes to creative writing, which is question number five in language paper one exams, they don't know how to incorporate this really powerful form of punctuation into their own writings. And I want to argue guys, once you understand how to use this punctuation and you now start incorporating it into your creative writing, you're now placing your essays and your answers in top bands. Okay, you're not giving yourself a fighting chance of getting that grade seven, eight and nine, as long as you understand how to use this punctuation. And of course, this punctuation is the use of the semicolon, the dot and the comma. Now guys, this question and actually I felt inspired to make this video based on my Sunday masterclass. Okay, so just last week, well, the Sunday gone, I went over how to write a model response for question number five. This is the creative question that came up in the November 2023 reset exam. Okay, so during that class, we went over that question and during the response that I was writing, the model response, I use a semicolon and one of my sentences and one of my students was like, wait, hang on, how do you even use it? What's the best context in which you use it? Okay. And so once that came up and I explained it to my class, I was like, actually, hang on, that's a really, really good point that they raised. And if more students understand how to use semicolons, why they're even used, actually, they can really, really easily use this very, very powerful technique within their own stories and start seeing that the grades are getting up. Okay, the teachers are really appreciating what they're writing. And also on top of that, don't forget when it comes to your final GCSEs. Okay, question number five, you will test it on AO5, which is your ability to write, you know, creatively and imaginatively. But also in AO6, which is also assessed in question number five, this is your ability to use the ambitious punctuation and sentence types. Okay. So of course, when you are using semicolons correctly, you are now getting those AO6 marks in your creative writing. Okay. So guys, I'm going to begin by quickly going over what semicolons are, why they are used. Okay. Because even today, lots of GCSE students simply don't understand how to use this punctuation and even why it's used. Okay. So remember firstly that semicolon is just simply a clever type of punctuation, a very sophisticated type of punctuation that is used by writers to separate parts of a sentence, which in other words, are able to stand alone. Okay, we call these parts of sentences independent clauses. Remember a clause is basically a sentence usually with a subject, verb and object. Okay. Sometimes you can have a main clause or an independent clause, which is basically a sentence that can stand by itself, it makes sense completely alone. And then you also have subordinate clauses, which is basically a sentence, a part of a sentence that relies on the rest of it to make sense. Okay. Without getting too technical, semicolons are used to join two sentences together, which if you separated those sentences, they can still stand by themselves. That's why we call them independent clauses. Okay. That's really it when it comes to semicolons. Okay. The job that they do is when you look at the sentence that they are used in, they tend to separate two parts of a sentence that can stand by themselves. Now, as I said, semicolons are really powerful. And I would say a powerful grade nine form of punctuation that you should try and include in your creative writing question, because when you do so, when you're writing your story or descriptive writing, not only are you fulfilling AO5, which is obviously, you know, you're being tested on your ability to write imaginatively. But more importantly, you are now starting to get your AO6 marks because AO6 tests your ability to use a range of complex sentence structures, as well as a range of punctuation in your creative writing. Okay. Now, why should you use semicolons? And even how do you use semicolons? Right? So now you understand how semicolons are used. They simply just separate two whole sentences. And but they put them within the same sentence. Okay, you know that. And on top of that, you know that you want to use semicolons because you want to start racking up those AO6 marks. However, why should you use them? And how do you even use them? Now, when it comes to semicolons, always see them almost as like a superhero punctuation. And the role that it plays in your creative stories is it saves your stories from having lots of choppy sentences. Okay, so start and stop sentences, short sentences, sentences that you know, maybe way too long and convoluted. Also semicolons kind of help in terms of making awkward sentences and awkward sentence transitions flow just that much more smoothly. You're going to see that in an example that I'm going to use in a few moments. Equally, semicolons are really, really powerful in breaking down really long sentences, either in stories that you read and of course in your own story. Okay, so this is how you should see semicolons. They're literally superheroes in the world of punctuation. Okay, they literally save people's stories. They make it more easy and smoother when somebody is reading the extract or you're writing. And equally, it saves a story from having way too many choppy sentences or really awkward transitions. Now, as I said, I want to now go over some examples so that you can see for yourself how you can use semicolons and in which context. And I'm actually going to start with my example. Okay, this is the phrase that I used in my Sunday masterclass to answer. So it was part of my story for the 2023 November reset exam, right? So I used this. Her death had been sudden semicolon, the funeral rushed. Remember, semicolons, when you're using them to separate two independent clauses, the clauses of the separate phrases are somehow connected in terms of the ideas that you are writing about. Okay, so of course, in this first example, right, this has been taken from a story that I wrote myself. Here, you've got the first phrase, right? Her death had been sudden. And in the story itself, it was about, you know, I was a protagonist and my grandma had died, right? So the first part of my story is or the sentence is her death had been sudden. And then I added this on top to show to then kind of segue and to go into the problem paragraph, the funeral was rushed. Okay, so that's a really, really great example of how you can use semicolons in your own stories to separate two very brief sentences, but make them transition really, really nicely and smoothly. So rather than, you know, put in these two as separate sentences, which will kind of make the sentence a little bit choppy or the story a little bit choppy, I've used a semicolon to transition. However, I'm going to go over another example. This one is by an author, one of my favorite authors called Leo Tolstoy, right? If any of you guys know Tolstoy, you'll probably identify which story this is taken from. It's from the first chapter, okay? This is a slightly longer sentence, but semicolon is used here. And actually, this is a really, really famous sentence, okay, a famous story sentence. So the statement, happy families are all alike semicolon. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Okay, it was written in the beginning chapter of one of Leo Tolstoy's novels. Now here, as you can see, you've got the first phrase or the first clause, happy families are all alike. But rather than using a full stop to then start a separate sentence, he transitioned and glided really nicely and smoothly into this other part of the sentence. And of course, also here he's using contrast, right? He's using happy, oxymoron, unhappy to create some kind of contrast and some kind of intrigue to draw the reader in, right? Because he then carries on to say every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So again, this is a great example and a really brilliant example of how semicolons have been used to show contrasting ideas, okay? So they're still somehow related to each other, right? It's about families entering different types of families, but it's done in a way that's really interesting. And because it's the first chapter, your reader really want to read on and find out what's going on, okay? And then my third example of yet another author, he's called F. Scott Fitzgerald. He uses semicolons to have two very, very brief and punchy sentences. He joins them together to avoid them from being too choppy. He states a pause semicolon, it ended horribly, okay? This is taken from a book called The Great Gatsby, right? And it's showing a sudden death, right? Now, going back to this, this is a great example of also how semicolons have been used for sentences that would otherwise be a little bit too short, okay? Again, there's this nice transition that's been created. Now, as I said, so hopefully by this stage, you've watched this and then thought, okay, actually, I'm going to probably use, you know, semicolons in my story and so on. However, I want to end with the quick word of warning. Now, if you've watched this channel long enough, you'll see, especially with my creative writing stories, I always encourage all of my students to include complex punctuation, right? So rather than always just using false stops and commas, using stuff like ellipses, and in this case, of course, semicolons. However, word of warning, don't overuse it in your stories, okay? You want to see semicolons as almost like seasoning, right? You kind of sprinkle it a little bit in your story. See semicolons that seasoning, meaning you use it sparingly, right? If you think about, for example, food, you know, you don't want to put so much seasoning and so much spices that, you know, the flavours are overpowered. You just sprinkle it a little bit and it makes it super, super nice, but don't do it too much. Also, the other word of warning when it comes to using semicolons is please make sure you don't use more than one semicolon in a sentence. OK, so if in theory, you can have a semicolon separate three, three parts of the sentence, four parts of the sentence, but it's not advisable to do so. Literally use just one semicolon in a whole sentence. And in all honesty, in your creative writing story, use it once, maybe twice in the whole story, kind of ellipsis, right? Don't abuse things like ellipsis. Use it once, maybe twice in your whole entire story because it's almost like seasoning. It's now kind of moving your writing to the top band without doing too much. OK, so guys, that's really it when it comes to how to use this grade nine punctuation semicolons. And I hope also within this lesson, you understand in which context you can use it. But also when you're looking at fiction writing, how other authors have used semicolons. OK, so guys, thank you so much for listening and I hope you've learned something new.