jaderbee Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 Why is there a semicolon in this sentence instead of a comma (or do I have it wrong and the semicolon is correct)? "At the birth of her first little child the queen rejoiced very much, and forgot the little man and her promise; but one day he came into her chamber and reminded her of it." There are lots of colons and semicolons where I would put commas in this version of Grimm's. For example, sometimes a colon is used instead of a comma before dialogue. Of course, my comma usage is questionable at best so I thought to appeal to the grammarians on this board. Secondly, when I was in school, "a, an, the, and numbers" were called determiners. Now I've seen them called articles. Are they also adjectives? Does anyone call them determiners any more? Thanks for any help. I really don't want my grammer deficiencies passed on to my kids. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yvonne Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 A, an, and the are articles, a subset of adjectives. There are two types of adjectives: limiting and descriptive. A, an, and the are limiting adjectives. I haven't run into the "determiners" term much so can't help there. A compound sentence, like the one you have quoted, includes two or more independent clauses. Those independent clauses are often joined by a comma and conjunction. However, if one or both of the independent clauses contains commas, a semicolon is used to join the two independent clauses. In your quoted sentence, there are two independent clauses: "At the birth of her first little child the queen rejoiced very much, and forgot the little man and her promise" and "one day he came into her chamber and reminded her of it." There is a comma in the first independent sentence so that may be why a semicolon was used to join the two independent clauses. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaderbee Posted May 7, 2015 Author Share Posted May 7, 2015 A, an, and the are articles, a subset of adjectives. There are two types of adjectives: limiting and descriptive. A, an, and the are limiting adjectives. However, if one or both of the independent clauses contains commas, a semicolon is used to join the two independent clauses. Thank you for clarifying about articles. I didn't know that rule about semicolons. Your post was the help I was looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yvonne Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 Thank you for clarifying about articles. I didn't know that rule about semicolons. Your post was the help I was looking for. My daughter & I were just reviewing that rule in Rod & Staff English. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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