i'm using a lot of semicolons in these and i gotta be honest i have no idea how you're supposed to use semicolons
Well, there are two schools of thought on semicolons; one involves a set of detailed, technical rules written by exactly the prescriptivist social engineers who also perpetrated shit like "he is correct and neutral for referring to a random person in general", and leads directly to the online peanut gallery who tiresomely answer "wow I don't have the rules memorised for semicolons" with "semicolons are extraneous lol!!!" โ and mine is "wow that's too many commas, who wants to be levelled up to a rare shiny punctuation mark, lads?"
semi-colons join two independent clauses. put simply: if you can replace a semi-colon with a full stop (a period) and the two sentences make sense on their own, then you're using it correctly.
"I love cheese; it pairs well with wine" works because "I love cheese. It pairs well with wine." also works.
"I love cheese; and wine" doesn't work because "And wine." isn't a valid independent sentence on its own
a semicolon is also appropriate in lists where one or more items in the list includes commas.
"The seamstress takes measurements; chooses fabric and thread; and sews dresses, shirts, and pants."
Basically when you've got two tiers of commas, you can distinguish between them by making the outer set the buff commas.
