(talk page visitor) Can't resist butting in here, if only to agree with what you're both saying about FAC. By the way, MOS:HOWEVERPUNC may be too prescriptive in insisting on a semicolon. Here is Theodore M. Bernstein in The Careful Writer: "Incidentally, if your elementary-school teacher told you never to begin a sentence with however, forget it. The governing consideration should always be simply this: Which ideas are to be contrasted? May Mrs. Phillips of P.S. 10 rest in peace." All his examples use periods. (I'll spare you my rant about Wikipedia dialects. )