> Seriously though, the semicolon is sometimes the ideal punctuation to break up a long sentence that isn't quite two separate sentences.

Semicolons divide related independent clauses, meaningly, basically, that you can't use a semicolon *unless* you're dividing two clauses that could stand alone as separate sentences.

There's an exception. You can use a semicolon instead of a comma when listing items that have commas in them. For example, "The cast of the play included Nathan Lane, who played a talking rutabaga; John Rhys-Davies, who played a pile of cigarette ashes; and Rick Moranis as the Beaver." But this is far less common usage, and it can be thought of as an entirely different punctuation mark that happens to look exactly the same.

> > > What gets confusing for me is this sort of thing:
> > > ...
> > > Maybe someone can clear this up.

It goes inside, unless you're British. It's an unpopular rule around here and is frequently frustrating to me too, but that's the rule.