Sentence containing a series of 'questions' and answers: semi- or colon?

Solution 1:

You're right. As written, it looks like it's saying:

I learned some facts about him today like

• his favorite color;
• green, his favorite food;
• pizza, and what he wanted to be when he grew up;
• a teacher.

The style guides I've looked at list two uses of a semicolon:

• Separating multiple independent clauses, as a pause that's weaker than a period, but stronger than a comma.
• Separating items in a list, when doing so with a comma would be confusing, because some of the items in the list contain commas.

Neither one of those is happening here; instead, the author has used a semicolon between a description (such as "his favorite color") and its corresponding identification ("green"). That's not one of the accepted uses of a semicolon.

One option would be to just switch the commas and semicolons:

I learned some facts about him today like his favorite color, green; his favorite food, pizza; and what he wanted to be when he grew up, a teacher.

But I'd probably use parentheses instead:

I learned some facts about him today like his favorite color (green), his favorite food (pizza), and what he wanted to be when he grew up (a teacher).