Something strange happened in that first sentence - it should of course have read - I don't really see how you can purchase .... Unfortunately there are a couple of other typos as well.

Hola Jose. Are you sure you didn't mishear? I don't really see how can you purchase part of your salary? Surely he spent all but 8 cents of his salary on war bonds, or he invested all but 8 cents of his salary in war bonds. But either way it's clear - this is surely a metaphorical 8 cents - in other words he used almost all his salary - everything except 8 cents - to buy bonds.

When it means almost, as in "he all but killed me" it is really like saying "everything except". There is no real ambiguity between the two uses. I don't see how it could possibly mean "almost 8 cents" here - I think buying 8 cents worth of bonds might be a bit tricky.

And there's a grammatical point:

1. = almost
The party was all but over when we arrived.
It was all but impossible to read his writing.
He all but knocked me senseless.
We'd all but arrived there when the accident happened.

In these examples, "all but" always seems to be followed by an adjective, adverb or verb, never by a noun, pronoun or number.

2 = everything except
All but one of the plates were damaged.
They've gone to the pub. All but me.
He spent all but eight cents.
All/Everything but the kitchen sink

But in the "everything except" meaning, it is always followed by a noun, pronoun or number, as in your example. It could also be replaced by "bar" - "All bar one".

Here are a few examples from the New York Times:

= everything except ( NB followed nouns or numbers)

I have spent all but the last two months of my life in Manhattan
McDonald's, Citigroup, Amazon.com and all but a handful of other American companies
Note that all but one of the writers I mention is a woman
... also ordered all but emergency vehicles off the state's highways

= almost (NB followed by adverb, adjective or verb)

whose name is all but synonymous with Wall Street
It was a term Hollywood all but coined for her
Congress seems all but paralyzed when it comes to raising revenue
HOCKEY; It's All but Over for Gretzky

And a strange one - "All but Over, Except for the Shouting", presumably a play on the more usual - "It's all over bar the shouting"

Here are a couple of "except" examples from Shakespeare:

Exeunt all but Brutus and Caesar - Julius Caesar - Act 1 Scene 2
Those that are married already - all but one shall live - Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1

Sorry, that doesn't really solve your translation problem though. Incidentally, just to get more confusing, "but" also used to mean "only":

A simple sentence hath but one subject - English Grammar - Lindley Murray 1795
In English, there are but two articles, "a" and "the" - A Short Introduction to Grammar - Robert Lowth 1762

It survives in a few idioms and song titles:

The mouse that has but one hole is quickly taken.
He has but one claim to fame
I Have But One Heart - song

@Skeeter. Perhaps you're right. Here's a capital after a comma, in the New York Times, of all places:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/technology/personaltech/microsofts-surface-pro-works-like-a-tablet-and-a-pc.html?_r=0

And in the print edition:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4466#comment-342740

Sorry Skeeter, I didn't read your comments very well. I see you've been talking about colons all along. But as the question was about semicolons I sort of assumed ... :):)

@shay - I don't know why you think a full stop (period) makes them look like a syllogism - all the dictionary examples of syllogism I can find also use semicolons:

All humans must die; I am a human; therefore I must die.
All dogs are animals; all animals have four legs; therefore all dogs have four legs.
Some temples are in ruins; all ruins are fascinating; so some temples are fascinating.

So if anything, it's surely the other way round.

@ Brus - "Here in Thailand, we bow ..." - Well, you certainly assimilate quickly, don't you? I can just imagine you saying, when you used to live in Scotland, "Here in Scotland we say - See yous all later." :):)

I was trying to think of some witty riposte to Saeed's earthy greeting myself, but I then I decided I didn't actually understand it.

Hi Skeeter. I doubt that it has anything to do with the Americans; they are a lot stricter on so-called "correct" semicolon use, and in fact punctuation in general, than we are. In an overbearing review of Lynne Truss's Eats Leaves and Shoots in the New Yorker, the reviewer wrote - "An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces. Some of Truss’s departures from punctuation norms are just British laxness."

I think we go more by gut feeling, Americans more by established rules.

Mind you, when the New York subway published a poster with a semicolon being used correctly, it was thought to be such a rare occurrence that it was deemed worthy of an op-ed in the New York Times. And when a serial killer left notes for the police that included correctly used semicolons, police assumed that the killer must be a journalist, as nobody else would know how to use them.

That's a pretty big convention you want to overturn there. The only way you'd get it published is to self-publish, I'd imagine. But I don't really see your problem: when we see a semi-colon linking two clauses, we expect them to have a strong link anyway, so why does the small letter, which we also expect to see, weaken that?

One thing to bear in mind is that you'll stop the flow of your readers as they wonder what the hell's going on. And you'll probably piss a lot of people off. Readers are unlikely to see your clever ploy and just think you're ignorant. Dangling modifiers would have nothing on this. If you're as good a writer as E.E.Cummings you might be able to pull it off. If not, better to stick with the conventions.

@BigD - I have vague memories that I was taught at school some fifty years ago that imperfect does indeed include 'used to', and checking Wikipedia I see you are right there, so I concede to you on that one. It is not, I think, a term which is used so much in modern grammar; it doesn't feature in the index of the aforementioned Swan, for example, and I had forgotten about that. Sorry!

It doesn't however, affect the main thrust of my argument, which I stand by.

@Big D -"before you came here" is a specific time in the past; we don't have to have a specified beginning date. "It all happened before the war ", "She died before he was born", "How did people manage before electricity" are all perfectly good examples of Past Simple (what you call Preterite); "used to" would only be possible in the third of those examples.

What you call Past Preterite, we would call Past Simple in modern EFL/ESL teaching. This is equivalent to Pretérito Indefinido in Spanish.

English Past Progressive (aka Past Continuous) is exactly the same as Past Imperfect, just the latter is a more traditional term. This isn't so much a case of an area of overlap, but total overlap, as they are one and the same. They correspond to Spanish Pretérito Imperfecto.

'Used to' is not usually referred to as a separate tense, but as a construction, which can always be substituted with Past Simple (aka Preterite), although not vice-versa. It only refers to past habits, repeated actions and states in the past which are no longer true. The equivalent of 'used to 'in Spanish is not a tense, but the past of the verb "soler":

solía pasear por aquí - he used to walk round here
Antes íbamos/solíamos ir a la playa en tren - We used to/would go to the beach by train.

"Para referirnos a costumbres en el pasado hay que usar 'to use to' o 'would'. 'Would' expresa acciones repetidas, mientras que 'to use to' describe también estados o situaciones" (Word Reference.com)

http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=soler

We have two possibilities for past states:
"I lived in Liverpool before I moved here"
"I used to live in Liverpool before I moved here"

And three possibilities for past habitual actions:
"At that time I walked to work every day"
"At that time I used to work every day"
"At that time I would to work every day"

For more on "used to" and "would", see:

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2012/12/used-to-will-and-would.html

@Curious indeed - that should read - not many people contract "I have to" to "I've to" ... "I've got to". With simple "have" I grant that it happens much more often: "Hey, I've an idea.", "I've a good mind to ..." etc.