Is this any help:
QUOTE(http://www.virtualsalt.com/semicoln.htm)
Semicolon use appears to have been declining in recent years, possibly because fewer and fewer people are confident about the proper role of this punctuation mark. Here are several ways to use the semicolon as an effective tool for enhancing clarity and emphasis in your writing.
1. Use a semicolon as a soft period. By using a semicolon instead of a period between two sentences, you show that those two sentences have a closer relationship to each other than they do to the sentences around them. The semicolon, in a sense, connects the sentences. (If you added a coordinating conjunction and a comma, you would show less of a connection; and with a period you show only the connection of proximity.)
* In books I find the dead as if they were alive; from books come forth the laws of peace. --Richard de Bury
* It is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive! --Thomas Carlyle
* Education is a high word; it is the preparation for knowledge, and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation.
* For nothing hinders a man's walking by the principles of his soul, but an opportunity to exert them; when that occurs, the secret enemy throws off his mask and draws his dagger. --Richard Steele
* To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned, we should have had no conscience. --Thomas Carlyle
Notice in the first Carlyle example that the two sentences about life and death are connected by a semicolon to join them closer and point up the contrast. Similarly, the next two sentences are also contrasting with each other ("never was a sport" versus "stern reality") and are also joined with semicolons.
2. Use a semicolon to connect main clauses containing internal punctuation. Think of a comma as a brief pause, a semicolon as a more moderate pause, and a period as a stop, and you can see the logic of the hierarchy.
* When he faints through desire, she comes to his aid; but when he revives, she scorns him. --A. C. Hamilton
* Whatever is left in the hands of chance must be subject to vicissitude; and when any establishment is found to be useful, it ought to be the next care to make it permanent. --Samuel Johnson
* The events we experience are less important than the meaning we give to them; for life is about meaning, not experience. --Proverb
* After her mother dies through frustrated rage, Parthenia arranges to marry Argalus; but Demagoras, seeking revenge, destroys her beauty by a magic ointment. --A. C. Hamilton
In the Samuel Johnson quotation, there is a coordinating conjunction ("and") joining the two sentences, and normally we could use just a comma with it; but the comma after "useful" might make the syntax less clear if only a comma were used after "vicissitude." So the semicolon clearly separates the sentences.
3. Use a semicolon to separate sentence elements of equal rank when they contain internal commas.
* The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations, he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead of seeking praise, by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the imagination. --Sir Joshua Reynolds
* Genius consists in a carefully trained, highly polished ability; a thoughtfully educated, unbiased good taste; and a willingness to engage in, and a persistence to do hard work. --Anonymous
* They [novels] are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account. --Samuel Johnson
Prose has become more bald and plain in recent years, so the kind of parallelism, balance, and rhythm you sense in the sentences above is less common. But perhaps that is not all for the good. Notice how clear and effective Reynolds is in the elaboration of his claim.
4. Use a semicolon between independent clauses connected by conjunctive adverbs. You could, of course, use a period and begin a new sentence, but you would lose the connective effect of the semicolon. (See Use 1, above.)
* A given kind of activity produces a corresponding character; therefore, moral characteristics are formed by actively engaging in particular actions. --Adapted from Aristotle
* The cathedral is in England; the painting, however, is in the United States.
* This project appears to be overwhelming; nevertheless, it can be done.
* Beginning students can reel off the words they have heard, but they do not yet know the subject: the subject must grow to be part of them, and that takes time; we must, therefore, assume that a man who displays moral weakness repeats the formulae of moral knowledge in the same way an actor speaks his lines. -- Adapted from Aristotle
For a list of conjunctive adverbs, see the Transitions page. And if you are a beginning writer, do note that the semicolon does not follow the adverb around. In the second sentence here, for example, the semicolon stays at the division between the sentences, while the "however," as an interrupter of the syntax (because it has been moved into the middle of the sentence), is surrounded by commas.
5. Use a semicolon between an independent clause and an elliptical clause when the clause is not connected by a conjunction using a comma.
* We gave him the medicine; no effect.
* We were not careless; just the opposite.
* They scored 141 points; our team, 110.
(An elliptical clause has the grammatical force of a sentence, but some of the words have been left out--and are clearly understood. In the first example, the words "it had" or "there was" are omitted but understood.)
Car Expert
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No - only 17 days left to get your present sorted... 
Mugglecst has just spoiled the OC bigtime! 
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