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Hi,

So I am reviewing this book, and I encounter the following phrase early on.

This book is about what happened when Brain arrived at Stanford and the story behind achieving his goal; expectation and loss; achieving goals; life; and ironies it sometimes bring.

I feel that instead of colons, there should be commas. I need your input. Is Colon a punctuation error, and should it be replaced by a comma? Also, it should be - the ironies. Please advise.

Using semi-colons for lists in which some items contain more than one word is acceptable grammar. Probably should be “the ironies”, though, as you’ve said.