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I am puzzled how punctuation would work with two lists in a sentence. Am I using the semi-colon correctly here?

"Those strawberries were ripe, red, and juicy; fruits with great taste, texture, and color."

Or would it be more proper to use an em dash?

"Those strawberries were ripe, red, and juicy—fruits with great taste, texture, and color."

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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"Those strawberries were ripe, red, and juicy; fruits with great taste, texture, and color."

This sentence would be better with a colon, since the phrase after your semi-colon is an incomplete sentence. Then fruits clearly refers to strawberries.

Your second is fine also, with the dash.

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  • I'm not sure it is "an incomplete sentence" - I would understand it as "[they were] fruits with ..." I tend to agree with Will Self on this "I like them - they are a three-quarter beat to the half and full beats of commas and full stops. Prose has its own musicality, and the more notation the better."
    – Greybeard
    Commented Aug 2, 2020 at 8:16

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