Technical Writing - How to Use Semicolons Correctly in Your Technical Documents?

A technical writer should use semicolons in a sentence to separate either closely related complete sentences or independent clauses that can actually be transformed into independent sentences.
Semicolons are great to separate the elements in a list that include both names and titles or attributes as well.

Here are some examples:
"Occasionally, a declaration is so long that it requires a size-A text box; text editing is of course another solution to the problem."

"The visitors cannot enter the site after sunset; the guards won't allow that."
"Waiting for the auction was a Picasso, valued at $23 million; a Pollock, appraised for $13 million; and a magnificent Van Gogh, previously sold to a Japanese banker for $90 million."
"Our team will deliver the first draft on January 10th as promised; notification of the review team for a quick turn-around time is appreciated."

"The sign said "Don't Stop Under Any Circumstances"; so we didn't." [NOTE that the semicolon follows the second quotation mark. A comma, on the other hand, would be INSIDE the second quotation mark.]

"The Index is not constructed carefully; therefore you need to write it again."
ASSIGNMENT:

What do you think about the following sentences? Are the semicolons used correctly or are they missing? How would you correct them?

a) "On the way to California we stopped at Boston, Massachusetts, Cleveland, Ohio, Austin, Texas and Kansas City, Kansas."


b) "Violation of traffic laws is an abomination it causes many deaths every year."
c) "The regression test revealed the weakness of the software that's why we hired a new coordination manager."

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