Hey! Word keeps bugging me about ; (semicolon), never learned about it in school so I'm wondering what the general rule to use it is comapred to a regular comma? For example in the following sentance, I wrote it as: Word wanted: Why isn't a regular , enough? Thanks!
I'm no expert but it looks like you have two seperate sentences that work well as they are and should be separated by a full stop. You could try that. A semi colon is used for listing things, usually. Maybe Word thought you were listing sentences? Hard to say.
Inserting full stop would work but I feel that I kind of lose the "flow" of the story, know what I'm saying? A regular comma works though, yes?
I think it looks better with a full stop. I'm a bit picky about being grammatically correct, although I do make mistakes myself. In my opinion it flows well as two separate sentences. The comma looks out of place. You would use a comma if you had written: She stepped softly over to the old wooden chair where the professor sat, breathing deeply. As you can see the words after the comma would not constitute a full sentence on their own. You could then create a sentence to describe that this was the only sound in the room etc.
A semi colon is for joining two closely related but complete sentences. You can use either - a sentence is just a collection of words that make sense together. Beginning with a capital letter and ending in a fullstop. How you choose to divide up that sentence is a matter of style and courtesy to the reader. However a semi colon would do what you want it provides a fullstop, whilst maintaining the flow, and joining those two completed sentences.
That makes perfect sense, will practice using semi colon more as it fullfiles my purpose perfectly; Two different sentances while maintaining the flow. Thank you both!
You are right. Here you have two independent clauses, and without a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, yet, and so) to go with it, you have a comma splice. You can separate two independent clauses with the period [.], the exclamation point [!], the question mark [?], and the semicolon [;]. Here, [;] suits the best.
This is helpful. Manav helped me too. Word was always flagging my sentences and I didn't understand why. Thanks.
Or maybe you can add a clause at the begning of the sentence, thus, making the first part of the sentences become a subordinate sentence, which needs the second part of the sentence to make sense. Therefore, a simon collin is not needed. Instead, a comma may be needed, I think. I'm no good at English.
Here's the rule as it appears in The Elements of Style, by E.B. White If two or more clauses, grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction, are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon. Stevenson's romances are entertaining; they are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark. It is of course equally correct to write the above as two sentences each, replacing the semicolons by periods. Stevenson's romances are entertaining. They are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark. My note: let the flow of the paragraph be your guide as to which way to go with this. Avoid over-using the semicolon.
Yes, the semicolon is legal as long as you have a verb in the second independent clause; otherwise, we may use the dash. (But, I'm no expert.)
No. It is called a run-on sentence, and a comma in that case is considered a mistake. As JMTweedie has pointed out, you can use a full stop. If you feel that the result doesn't flow well then yes, a semicolon is just the thing. One of the common uses for a semicolon is to join two closely related sentences without the need for a conjunction, just as Word has suggested to you. (Word does get it right sometimes!) There are other uses for the semicolon, such as separating items in a list where the items themselves contain commas, but that's more for technical writing than creative writing.
If you right click on the wiggly underline you get a popup menu in which one of the options is to explain the grammar.
