Which Sentence Is Correctly Punctuated?

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3 Answers

Rena Chisholm Profile
Rena Chisholm answered
  Most practical jokes, such as; unexpected loud exploding fireworks, collapsing unstable seats and mysterious deceptive disappearing objects, are exploitations of these situations.
 
Unexpected, loud and exploding are descriptives of the fireworks, so there is no pause, therefore, no comma is needed.
As are, collapsing unstable, describes seats.
The word, and, provides a continuation of the sentence.
Mysterious, deceptive and disappearing, are describing the word, (objects).
 
The ( ; ), is always used behind (such as), because you are about to list the examples of something.
I would like to bake several pies, such as; blueberry, apple, cherry and chocolate.
No need to put a comma after cherry, because of the and.
 
 
Alison Baillie Profile
Alison Baillie answered
Most practical jokes, such as unexpected, loud, exploding fireworks,
collapsing unstable seats, and mysterious, deceptive, disappearing
objects, are exploitations of these situations.
You don't need any semi-colons in that sentence at all.

thanked the writer.
Alison Baillie
Alison Baillie commented
If you were really desperate to use colons and semi-colons, you could put it like this:
Most practical jokes, such as: unexpected, loud, exploding fireworks; collapsing unstable seats; and mysterious, deceptive, disappearing objects, are exploitations of these situations.
But that is really overdoing it. The rule of thumb is: if you don't know where to put a semi-colon DON'T USE IT. Sorry tamarind, but putting it after 'such as' is just not grammatically correct. If you want to put a pause after 'such as' you should use a colon, thus :
A semi-colon can be used when you are making a list of things which already have commas in them, as in Valencia's example, but if you are not sure where to put them you shouldn't use them - a comma is quite good enough, and too many semi-colons, or semi-colons in the wrong place, makes the writer appear immature and naive, in the same way as using too many exclamation marks.
Rena Chisholm
Rena Chisholm commented
I don't know who gave you that poor rating, karmabum. It wasn't me. I would not have done that and I don't know who rated my answer either. I hope you don't think I would do such a thing.
I wonder about the ratings sometimes.
I am sure you are right, because I am not an English teacher and I see that you are.
You deserved the five star rating, not me.
Alison Baillie
Alison Baillie commented
Don't worry about it tamarind - I don't take much notice of the ratings anyway. I'm not really an English grammar teacher - I was only joking about that. I've taken it off, in case I mislead other people too! ;o) I shall sit in a corner and keep quiet for a bit now....;o)
Anonymous Profile
Anonymous answered
Her favorite authors: Pat Conroy, Anne Siddons, Fannie Flagg, spoke at the conference.

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