How do you ensure your preposition to end sentences with a single word following…?
I am currently writing an essay for school and ran into a problem that neither my friends nor I could solve.
Non any consequences for poor behavior, whether the consequences be outwardly applied like being grounded by a parent, or an emotional response like feeling ashamed for upsetting a peer, there is no development of a trait required in civilized humans, empathy.
How do you end a sentence with a single word? What do you think the rest of the paper will be about? I believe there is a correct form of punctuation to lead on to the summarising word, but am not sure what it is. How can I create a hyphen?
I really don’t like to say “i.e”. Again! “It’s
not something to do ” and let it just happen “
I would suggest
…they don’t develop a trait (that is) necessary for a civilized human being. empathy.
You could note I’ve rewritten the part before empathy slightly. What is written in the original post is not acceptable English, as others have already pointed out. Any little change that would make it acceptable is a necessary thing for civilized humans, but I personally prefer .
Is it okay to use a comma instead of the colon? Was it important for you to emphasize empathy particularly strongly?
Discussion
I will follow CGEL, pp. 1350-1362, 1741
In , empathy functions as an asyndetic subclausal supplement. Is your system really that complicated?
A supplement is a word or a word group that is not syntactically integrated with the rest of a sentence. Instead, it bears a purely semantic relation to some part (called the anchor) of the main sentence.
What’s the asyndectic vs syndectic distinction has to do with the presence ou absence of so-called indicators. What are phrases like namely, that is, especially, etc., again? , whose function is to clarify the relation of supplement to its anchor. Since there are no indicators in , the supplementation is asyndectic.
Now, asyndetic subclausal supplementation comes in two flavors, illustrated by :
a. They went to Bill Clinton, the only man in the world who could help them in any strong way.
b. What better man did she have to help them? Bill Clinton?
On both and , boldfaced word (unmodified sentences) are the caption. The difference between them is that in , the supplement provides only descriptive information, whereas in , it provides identifying information.
What is the distinction between punctuation and grammar? Originally it was but now it is a non-comma. What is the comma? In contrast, a colon is acceptable only in , where the supplement provides identifying information.
Your case is like .. Just like in you can precede the supplement either with a comma or a colon (or even an em-dash). How can colons be replaced by comma and so forth?
