What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

“No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you st…”

“As with other paired bracketing devices (such as parentheses, dashes and quotat…”

“The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to abso…”

“She was one of those invalids who has to lie down a lot, and sometimes can't li…”