Unfairly banned wrote: ↑08 Apr 2023, 06:40
First of all, thanks for stopping by:
-#1 My Trip to Adele is one of the novels that, (error: “the” should be replaced with “those”).
-#2 On the other side, in America, you will be caught between two doctors trying to find out why their love has grown cold, after eight years of engagement. (error: comma before “after” should be removed).
-#3 as well as stubbornness and fighting with her reactionary, tyrannical ex-husband; a fight using their only young son, Waleed, as a battlefield. (error: semicolon should be a hyphen).
-#4 Each of the characters in the novel will individually share with you the purpose of his trip to Adele. (error: “his tip” should be replaced with “their trip”).
Hi,
#1 I think this is a stylistic difference, not an objective error. “Those” is a demonstrative adjective that tells the reader “which one.” It implies a subset of all novels from which you would choose
My Trip to Adele. Using “those” makes it clearer, but the definite article “the” is grammatically acceptable. I could not find a site that compares using “those” vs “the,” but this reference has a helpful explanation of demonstrative adjectives:
https://www.bkacontent.com/gs-demonstra ... djectives/
#2 A comma is not needed before a prepositional phrase at the end of a sentence unless the information is nonessential, in extreme contrast, or required for clarity. These three scenarios can sometimes be hard to justify in a recheck request. In your example, a comma is not needed.
This link has excellent examples of when (and when not) to use a comma with prepositional phrases:
https://www.pristineword.com/comma-adve ... al-phrase/
#3 In general, semicolons are used to join two independent clauses without using a conjunction. In this example, the content after the semicolon is a sentence fragment. A comma or hyphen could be used based on the part of the sentence you referenced. In a long sentence, a hyphen is preferable because it would reduce the complexity of having too many commas. Do you read your reviews aloud as part of your editing process? I read my review aloud and use a tool such as Natural Reader to read it to me. Both are helpful in different ways. If I get tired or distracted reading a sentence, that usually means it’s too long or complex and I need to shorten it or break it into multiple sentences. Here is a link on semicolons:
https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/semicolon.html
#4 I don’t think using “his” is an objective error in this sentence. Using the masculine “he” to represent both sexes is less common now, but I would consider it a subjective issue and not an objective error. Since English doesn’t have a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, the trend is to use forms of the third-person plural “they” in singular situations:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writ ... _they.html
I hope these explanations and links are helpful.
P.S. I also hope your situation is corrected soon. Looking forward to your next screen name.
