Location: Q Train; New York, NY
Picture taken: July 2007
Textual representation of image: “Teach your kids about conservation at our fun kids site. They log on, you save money. www.conEd.com/kids”
Most places, people would look at you a little odd if you excused yourself to say you wanted to take a picture of the subway ad just over their heads. But, I suppose, I was so much less strange than Phil, the homeless guy with his shirt on inside-out who made his candy-sales spiel sound like the gospel, that the natives just nodded and continued staring into that blank space ahead.
There are two grammatical problems with this ad. First, the second kids is in desperate need of a final apostrophe, since it is a possessive — an adjective modifying site. Also, the final sentence contains a comma splice, or two independent clauses separated with a comma.
Rule: Use a final apostrophe with an adjective ending in s.
Rule: Two independent clauses can be separated with a period and a capital letter; a semicolon; a comma and a conjunction (and, or, but, for, nor, so, or yet); or a semicolon, a transitional expression (like however), and a comma.
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© 2008, mrshawke-dot-com.
Most of my teaching resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, which means you can feel free to use them with attribution as long as you don’t use them commercially. If you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask me. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to send out my tests and quizzes, but I am hoping to establish a less time-consuming alternative for this in the near future. Sorry!!
