I’ve been having trouble with my grammar. The biggest problem was comma splices. I looked around and found Grammarly, which is an online service that corrects grammar problems, including comma splices.
With the confidence of the Grammarly program helping me with the problems, I submitted my work to my tutor. My instructor in America still found comma splices. Writing the following sentences, I expected to find an error:
- The Minister loves ice cream sundaes, his favourite toppings are hot fudge and bananas.
- The students wanted indoor recess, the teachers wanted outdoor recess.
- My mother loves baking, she just made brownies.
- Black bears are beautiful, they have shiny coats.
- I love watching movies, I hate watching TV.
- I watched football yesterday, it was boring.
- Amanda has an excellent job, she never has to worry about money.
- The fans in the football stadium pushed forward, people began to panic.
The program found no problem. I sent the sentences above in an email, and they said it was going to take a while as English is complicated, the only language that does not like comma splices. So now, the online program finds the problems except sentence eight as they are still working on it. Grammarly replaces the comma with a semicolon. The semicolon is fine for standard English text except when it is dialogue, as I got the reply that nobody speaks with semicolons. The other solution is adding a conjunction like: for, if, when. When the conjunction joins terms that are of equal importance in the sentence then it is right to use a coordinating conjunction like: or, but, and. When the conjunction is joining a subordinate sentence, then use subordinating conjunctions like: until, because. Another problem is that not many people speak correct English, but it is still required for the characters.
A sentence is an object and a verb, so that’s it. Also, just then I ended a sentence with a preposition, which is not allowed either. There is also the passive voice, which is not allowed. I’ll discuss the passive voice soon.
Crime Fiction: Hardboiled Detective 