Semicolons are often used in a list following a colon— particularly, yet again, if they avoid ambiguity.

But punctuation matters, because it enables writers to achieve clarity and avoid ambiguity.

These use hyphens, or not, to avoid ambiguity — because they modify (change) the sense.

In such cases an inertial reference frame may be called an inertial observer to avoid ambiguity.

To avoid ambiguity, the message length value must be itself resistant to length extensions.