Two recent examples hit home why the semicolon, otherwise despised by writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Kurt Vonnegut, is indispensable to the art and architecture of prose.

FORBES: Satmars, Simone de Beauvoir And semicolons

Kidder and Todd's "Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, " to be published Tuesday.

WSJ: Word Craft: Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd on Good Prose