Around 1580, Henry Denham starts using the semicolon "with propriety" for English texts, and more widespread usage picks up in the next decades.

Around 1640, in Ben Jonson's book The English Grammar, the character is described as "somewhat a longer breath" compared to the comma. The aim of the breathing, according to Jonson, is to aid understanding.

In 1644, in Richard Hodges' The English Primrose, it is written:

At a comma, stop a little;[...]At a semi-colon, somewhat more;[...]At a colon, a little more than the former;[...]At a period, make a full stop;

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