case, depends entirely on the degree of emphasis with which
the words would be spoken. If, in speaking, a slight pause would be
made, the comma, not the mark of exclamation, is the proper point.

XX. If a word be repeated in order to give it intensive force, a comma
follows it each time that it occurs; but, in the case of an adjective
repeated before a noun, not after the last expression of it.

It was work, work, work, from morning till night.

He travelled a long, long way.

Dean Alford, in "The Queen's English," says that this mode of pointing
such expressions as "the wide wide world," "the deep deep sea," makes
them absolute nonsense. The suggestion of a pause seems to us to bring
out more effectively the intensive force of the repetition. And we
doubt whether Dean Alford himself would have omitted the comma in our
first example.

THE SEMICOLON

XXI. The semicolon is the point usually employed to separate parts of
a sentence between which there is a very distinct break, but which are
too intimately connected to be made separate sentences.

The patient dates his pleasure from the day when he feels
that his cure has begun; and, perhaps, the day of his
perfect re-establishment does not yield him pleasure so
great.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance;
no one has so deeply meditated on the subject; no one is so
sincerely interested in the event.

Not one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general
right to choose our own governors; to cashier them for
misconduct; and to form a government for ourselves.

The semicolon is used in enumerations, as in the last example, in
order to keep the parts more distinctly separate.

XXII. When a sentence consists of two or more independent clauses not
joined by conjunctions, the clauses are separated by semicolons.

To command a crime is to commit one; he who commands an
assassination, is by every one regarded as an assassin.

His knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact; his
pursuits were too eager to be always cautious.

If the conjunction "and" were inserted in the last sentence, the comma
would be used instead of the semicolon. A conjunction forms a bridge
over the gap between two statements, and, where they are neither long
nor complicated, we pass from one to the other without noticing any
distinct break. But there is such a break