human
I've always been a little confused about the difference between a comma and a semicolon. Can you explain it?
assistant
A comma is used to separate independent clauses in a sentence, while a semicolon is used to join related independent clauses or phrases together. For example, "I want to go to the store; I need milk." In this case, both sentences are independent, so there's no need for a conjunction like "and" or "but". However, if we wanted to add an explanation of why the person wants to go to the store, we would use a conjunction such as "because": "I want to go to the store because I need milk."