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Sometimes a complex list doesn't need terminal punctuation:

John, my friend; Tom, my enemy; and Darren are all coming.

But when it does need terminal punctuation, I'm flummoxed. I think I should use whatever terminal punctuation the last list item would ordinarily take; in other words, I shouldn't change anything to account for the semicolon-delimited list:

John, my friend; Tom, my enemy; and Darren, whom I don't know, are all coming.

But it feels strange to separate list items with a "stronger" separator than the terminal punctuation—it feels as though I'm associating the rest of the sentence with the final list item rather than the whole list. In some cases, the easy solution is to set off the list with dashes or parentheses (see this answer), but that's not always an option.

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    The 'super-comma' usage of the semicolon was introduced to help. When it becomes a problem, it's time to find an alternative. << John (my friend), Tom (my enemy!) and Darren – whom I don't know – are all coming. >> Oct 12, 2020 at 14:07
  • As @EdwinAshworth indicates, you have another 'dimension' of bracketing available, in the use of em dashes.
    – Nigel J
    Oct 12, 2020 at 16:34

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