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Haloony Posted 18 years ago
Grammar

Sentence help. Not sure about punctuation.

Hey all,

There have been many times in my lifetime when I have formed a sentence, that I know is well formed, but not entirely sure how to punctuate it. In this case I am pretty sure the sentence is well formed. In any case, here is the sentence:


"So, it seems rather clear that sentences do have meaning, but the question remains, how does any specific sequence of symbols obtain this quality of meaningfulness?"
My question surrounds the use of the comma between "remains" and "how." I think I have misused the comma, but I am not sure what I should insert instead. I have never been sure about using a semicolon when a conjunction has already used, and even more unsure of the rules for colon use. I would be very grateful if someone can help me out with this sentence specifically, and if anybody can give me general help with colon and semicolon use.

Thank You,
Hal

  

Top answer

Your punctuation looks ok. html

  • Your punctuation looks ok.
  • html
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5 Answers
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Your punctuation looks ok. For some study on commas, see this link: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_comma.html
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Hi, Hal; welcome to the English Forums.

IMO, your punctuation of this sentence is perfect. The "question" needs to be set off. I think the comma after "So" is optional, but we'd need to know what came immediately before. I think the other two are of equal importance, so if you wanted to replace one of them with a semi to stress it over the other one, which would it be? The meaning is
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haloony"So, it seems rather clear that sentences do have meaning, but the question remains, how does any specific sequence of symbols obtain this quality of meaningfulness?"
Firstly get rid of "so" and "it seems" ...these make the statement very soft and weaken your argument.

Try it like this:
It's clear that sentences do have meaning; but the ques
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Hi,

"So, it seems rather clear that sentences do have meaning, but the question remains, how does any specific sequence of symbols obtain this quality of meaningfulness?"

Here is my suggestion.

"So, it seems rather clear that sentences do have meaning, but a question remains. How does any specific sequence of symbols obtain this quality of meaningfulness?"

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Thanks everybody! You have all been very helpful.

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