Ha, I’m the world’s worst slogan writer. Or, at least, I would be if I wrote slogans. Somebody else will have to do that job; I'm just the cheerleader! ;)
Nah -- according to every current U.S. style manual semicolons are not pretentious. But certain uses of semicolons are considered as outdated and old fashioned as putting two spaces after a sentence-ending period (used to be required before today's on screen, online and on printer fonts with their prigrammed in automatic kerning). Unless actually responsible for typesetting to a printing press, it was always acceptable to substitute hyphens for en and em dashes.
A correct use of a semicolon is still to join two phrases/clauses to avoid a run-on sentence. An outdated use is one I still make -- putting a semicolon before a conjunction/transition joining two sentences with a comma after the conjunction/transition.
Outdated usage example = "The boy winked at the girl; but, she did not see it.". Modern usage example = "The boy winked at the girl, but she did not see it."
The modern usage still has me reaching for a red pen to add a semicolon and a comma, then I catch myself. (See? Just caught myself so managed to put a comma before " then")
Well, I'll let you take up the pretentious issue with Norris and The New Yorker; she was quite clear in her chapter about colons and semi-colons and her and TNY's feelings on the matter. ;)
A correct use of a semicolon is still to join two phrases/clauses to avoid a run-on sentence. An outdated use is one I still make -- putting a semicolon before a conjunction/transition joining two sentences with a comma after the conjunction/transition.
Outdated usage example = "The boy winked at the girl; but, she did not see it.". Modern usage example = "The boy winked at the girl, but she did not see it."
The modern usage still has me reaching for a red pen to add a semicolon and a comma, then I catch myself. (See? Just caught myself so managed to put a comma before " then")