I have been switching between grammar checkers online trying to find which sentence is incorrectly puctuated but they both come back as good to go, care to help me figure this out?
1st: This week's homework assignment includes an essay; a group project; and a digital slide presentation.
2nd: The waiter provided terrible service—and expected a tip.
Good luck, this is tough.
1. I woud do it like this:
This week's homework assignment includes an essay, a group project and a digital slide presentation.
2. I would do this one in one of two different ways.
The waiter provided terrible service - and expected a tip.
The waiter provided terrible service...and expected a tip.
However, I am NOT an English major !
The first one is incorrect. It's not right to use a semicolon to separate items in a series like that.
I do not want to confuse anyone more, but there are very specific circumstances where using a semicolon to separate items in a list is correct. This occurs when the items in the list contain commas already. This is not the case in OwenT154 question, though. Let's look at an example.
Look at the following list:
A sample sentence using these items is "I have been to New York, California, Nevada, and Florida."
Look at this modified list:
Notice how the items in the list already have commas. Therefore, semicolons are necessary to separate these items. A sample sentence using these items is "I have been to New York, New York; San Francisco, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Miami, Florida. For clarity purposes, commas are "promoted" to semicolons in order to show clear separation between each item.