Grammar Question- Do you capitalize the word coming after a semicolon in a sentence?

Question

It is also common for the nervous system to be damaged due to a direct injury; possibly resulting in paralysis, brain damage, and difficulty with balance and coordination.

Is this grammatically correct?

Answer 1

I have a degree in English Literature:

I was going to re-arrange the sentence for you so you don't use the semi-colon, but the more I read your sentence, I realized that your semi-colon is correct.

You have a proper sentence, and you put a semi-colon at the end so you can state additonal information. This additional information is not needed for the sentence to make sense, but it adds more information. If you didn't have a semi-colon, you would have to repeat words from the first sentence to have it amke sense with a period.

For instance, "A direct injury can result in paralysis, etc."

This is redundant. Since you know other punctuations can ruin the flow of the sentence and make it awkward (using a comma), or make it redundant (using a period), a semi-colon makes the most sense.

Answer 2

No, you don't capitalize the word that follows a semicolon. A capital is only necessary at the beginning of a sentence or when using a proper noun (eg, someone's name).

Each part of a sentence which contains a semicolon should be able to stand alone as a sentence on its own; each part should have a subject, a verb and an object.

Your sentence is not grammatically correct. If you replace the semicolon with a comma, the sentence will make sense. A second possibility is to use a period instead of a semicolon and begin the next sentence with "A direct injury may possibly result in....."

Good Luck!

Answer 3

Grammar Girl Semicolon

Answer 4

Semicolon Grammar

Answer 5

You don't capitalize a word after a semicolon; the punctuation is used to separate two independent clauses that are somehow related, but reside within one complete sentence.
Your use of the semicolon isn't kosher, but some people would appreciate its usage, since it lessens the confusion instilled by your heavy usage of commas towards the end of the sentence, which compels some to desire a heavier punctuation mark. However, strictly speaking, your use of it in your example is incorrect, since the portion after the semicolon is dependent on the first half of the sentence, so a comma would be the more appropriate punctuation to use.

Answer 6

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Grammar Question- Do you capitalize the word coming after a semicolon in a sentence?
It is also common for the nervous system to be damaged due to a direct injury; possibly resulting in paralysis, brain damage, and difficulty with balance and coordination.

Is this grammatically correct?

Answer 7

The word after a semicolon should not be capitatlized (unless it's a word that should be cpitalized in any case, like a proper noun), but the semicolon in your sentence should be just a comma, anyway. Usually a semicolon indicates that each part of the sentence could stand alone as a separate sentence, and the part after the semicolon in your sentence would be just a fragment. Also, change "due to" to "because of" or simply "by" or "through." ("Due" is an adjective and must modify a noun, but unlike most adjectives in English, it usually comes after the noun. In your sentence there's no noun for it to modify.)

Answer 8

Semicolon after a sentence is same as putting a dot but no need to capitalize that word.

Answer 9

Do you capitalize the word coming after a semicolon? No
Is this grammatically correct? Yes

Answer 10

I think this is actually incorrect; the information after the semicolon should form a complete sentence and yours does not. See what I did there? I don't think that you can simply list information afterwards unless you have a complete subject-verb sentence. If you want to list, you need to use an actual colon (:). The lady with the degree in English is incorrect.

Answer 11

It is correct. You do not capitalize the first word following a semicolon unless it is a proper noun.