Punctuation

Yantze

Suggest improvements for the highlighted problem area: For thousands of years the Yangtze has helped shape Chinese society. The river sustains life, it provides income and food to nearly one billion people. It carries people to the ocean as the water flows east, it brings others inland as the winds blow west. Above all, the Yangtze has shaped the culture. This culture includes occupations, such as farming, fishing, and even banditry, stories, especially to explain the names of every cliff and boulder, and old beliefs, including the usefulness of whistling and the danger of leaping fish. This last piece of culture is very interesting. The old belief is that any fish that leaps into one's boat is a demon. To avoid bad luck, one must do the following; take the fish ashore, dig a hole, and bury it. Answer: - Using the Semicolon to Segregate - When we list a series of items, we normally use a comma to separate the items. But when the items are long and contain commas of their own, readers can get lost. A long sentence in the middle opening paragraph shows how this can happen: This culture includes occupations, such as farming, fishing, and even banditry, stories, especially to explain the names of every cliff and boulder, and old beliefs, including the usefulness of whistling and the danger of leaping fish. The series can be made easier to read if the semicolon is used to separate these complicated items: This culture includes occupations, such as farming, fishing, and even banditry; stories, especially to explain the names of every cliff and boulder; and old beliefs, including the usefulness of whistling and the danger of leaping fish. Therefore we see that, in long complicated lists, the semicolon can be a useful signpost for the reader.

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