QUESTION
Is the semicolon in the following sentence misused?
How can I miss you; we've never met?
I feel that the sentence, to be grammatically correct, must be split into its individual parts.
ANSWER
Yes, that's wrong. A semicolon is supposed to connect two related clauses. What you have there is a question and a statement, with a semicolon for the question and the question mark on the statement.
Something like "I can't miss you; we've never met." would be proper use of the semicolon.
Or, "How can I miss you? We've never met." would be proper punctuation for the given sentence.
Or, "How can I miss you if we've never met?" would be a proper replacement for the errant semicolon.
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