Printers in many countries like Italy, France and Germany pioneered the use of advanced punctuation like the semicolon(invented by Italian poet Pietro Bembo) in 1494.
The usage of the semicolon, a way to pause in a sophisticated manner, puzzled many writers(and readers) making them a much-ridiculed form of punctuation for many centuries.
The prison letters by Martin Luther King Jr. used a series of sentences suspended in the air using the semicolon, adding to the weight of the suppressed black people’s conditions.
A 2012 reader survey in the Swedish Journal Språktidningen listed the semicolon as a favourite punctuation mark.