Are these semi-colons in the right place?

Question

John marched towards the antediluvian gate;he knew he was about to approach danger.

Sarah's chest throbed with pain;she clutched it in agony.

Harry entered the great dungeon;he knew he wouldn't come out alive;two eyes stared at him ravenously.


I'm not really sure about the last one, i tried to be a bit more adventurous as I've noticed that in books some authors use 2 semi-colons in one sentence-is the last sentence correct in punctuation? And what about the other ones?

Answer 1

the 3rd sentence is awkward. You shouldn't use that many semicolons unless your trying to create parallel structure.
The first clause is a independent clause and can stand alone...as is the second;however, the third is dependent and needs to be included in the same sentence as the second clause.
Try...
He entered the great dungeon. He knew he wouldn't come out alive; for, two eyes stared at him ravenously.

Answer 2

First two are good (but put a space after it).

I don't think the third is absolutely wrong, but I find it jarring to have Harry suddenly not be the grammatical subject anymore.

How about

Harry entered the great dungeon; he knew he wouldn't come out alive; he saw two eyes staring ravenously at him.

Answer 3

The first two are fine. But I would definitely make the last one into two seperate sentences. Don't try to use semi-colons jsut for the sake of it, use them when they are necessary. Better to split your sentences up more than to use semi-colons too much.