Language Center Program, Writing Tips

Volunteer State Community College | Division of Humanities

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Grammatically, both options will be correct; however, there is a slight difference in meaning. When you join two sentences with a comma and coordinating conjunction, you are expressing a very close relationship between the two ideas. When you join the two sentences with a semicolon, you are indicating that the ideas are related to one another but less so than when joined by a comma and a coordinating conjunction.

A few years ago, I came across an analogy in The Writing Lab Newsletter that you might find helpful. If two adjoining sentences within a single paragraph are separated by a period, they are just "friends." If they are joined with a semicolon, they are "engaged." And if they are joined with a comma and coordinating conjunction, they are "married."