punctuation - Am I misusing the semicolon?

Is the semicolon in the following sentence misused?

How can I miss you; we've never met?

I feel that the sentence, to be grammatically correct, must be split into its individual parts.

Answer

Yes, that's wrong. A semicolon is supposed to connect two related clauses. What you have there is a question and a statement, with a semicolon for the question and the question mark on the statement.

Something like "I can't miss you; we've never met." would be proper use of the semicolon.

Or, "How can I miss you? We've never met." would be proper punctuation for the given sentence.

Or, "How can I miss you if we've never met?" would be a proper replacement for the errant semicolon.