The corpus of contemporary American English lists 169,326 instances of comma followed by so. Even compensating for "so that" uses, it's clearly the norm. They also list 1,829 instancesa of semicolon followed by "so," enough to convince me that it's a reasonably
common option.
As I said in an earlier post, "so" can be used in ways that don't subordinate the clause that follows. I can't think of a reasonable reason to require or forbid a semi-colon ahead of it. Apparently, there are plenty of writers and copy editors out there
who accept both.
Craig
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/