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Spielberg's new movie

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Source: — Sentence Correction |
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by MartyMurray » Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:16 am
jain2016 wrote:
I offered him a ticket to Spielberg's new movie ; a movie he had always wanted to see.

What is wrong in this sentence
The sentence would be fine, except that a semicolon should be used to separate two independent clauses, rather than a clause and a modifying appositive as it does in your example.

Just replace the semicolon with a comma and it will be fine.
Last edited by MartyMurray on Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:24 pm
Adding to what Marty said... whenever you see a semicolon, you should ask yourself, "is there a complete stand-alone sentence on either side?"

In your example, the first part could be a full sentence on its own; the second part could not (it does not contain a subject and a verb).
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by jain2016 » Thu Nov 05, 2015 10:43 pm
Hi ,

Thanks for your reply.

If we remove "a movie" from the second clause, then the second part will be an independent clause??

Please advise .

Thanks,

SJ
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by MartyMurray » Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:49 am
jain2016 wrote:If we remove "a movie" from the second clause, then the second part will be an independent clause??
Technically the answer to your question is "Yes." He had always wanted to see. is an independent clause with a subject and a verb.

At the same time, just to be clear, this structure does not really make sense.

I offered him a ticket to Spielberg's new movie; he had always wanted to see.

Clauses connected by a semicolon are generally closely related, being basically two parts of one thought. In that structure above what seems to be going on is that there are two almost completely unrelated ideas, the first that someone offered someone else a ticket, the second that the person had always wanted to see, as if he had not been able to see.

This would make more sense.

I offered him a ticket to Spielberg's new movie; he had always wanted to see it.
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