In Phonetics^x, Punctuation^x

Emeritus Professor John C. Wells in his daily phonetic blog on Firday 20 October 2006: Unusual pronunciations observed recently in the mouths of native speakers of English: from a CNN newsreader, to obey someone sl/æ/vishly. Since the point being made was the possible offensiveness of this...

I am inclined to agree with Clive in some respects. Generally, if asked "when should I use a semi-colon?" my response is "Never". It's a bit like the price in an expensive shop; if you have to ask - you can't afford it! There are other punctuation marks (e.g. the full stop) which will do the job...