: Re: Semicolon or better prose? Word's grammar check tells me the second sentence below requires a semicolon rather than a comma â€œIf you donâ€™t accept your physical limitations, you will burn

Word's grammar checker is calibrated for documents, not for fiction. And even for documents, it is a bit of automated software, that is bound to make mistakes. You shouldn't trust it implicitly, and you shouldn't let it bully you.

As @DoubleU states in a comment, your original sentence is perfectly grammatically correct. In fact, adding a semicolon there would be incorrect and weird. (I do actually use semicolons. I would never put one there.)

A semicolon connects two independent clauses, you could sort of replace it with "and". (Here is more information.) But in your case, the clauses are not independent. If you stick an "and" there, as you've tried to do, you slightly change the meaning of the phrase. You imply that the absence of empathy in Elena's voice is independent from her being analytical. Which is not the case, is it?

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: Re: Semicolon or better prose? Word's grammar check tells me the second sentence below requires a semicolon rather than a comma â€œIf you donâ€™t accept your physical limitations, you will burn

More posts by @Deb2945533

: How to describe skin colour, if "white" is not the point of reference? A character looks at another character, skin colour creates certain associations. A character looks at himself, and associations

: A better sentence for a sequence of events This is an extract from my personal 300 word writeup about a video. Can anyone suggest a smoother way to write my final paragraph? The first paragraph

: Finding out about other countries' military day-to-day Where does one go to find out about the day-to-day of military life? In countries other than my own? I don't mean combat - I mean the

: Third wheel character I have three characters, who are supposed to be good friends. Athos, Aramis, and Porthos, if you wish. Instead, I have two characters who share a strong Frodo-Sam relationship,

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