Wall-newspaper punctuation: comma, dash or colon?
A wall-newspaper editor has a sentence with numbered gaps: «Лес (1) который мы видели из окна (2) казался стеной (3) а поле за ним (4) было похоже на море». One student proposes commas at 1, 2, 3, 4. Another proposes commas at 1 and 2, a dash at 3, and no mark at 4. A third proposes a colon at 3. The editor must choose a scheme and justify each mark by syntactic structure, not by pauses. The sentence must be printed in 40 characters per line, so the editor also wants to know whether the dash at 3 would create a readable contrast or an error.
1. Give the correct punctuation and explain the role of each mark.
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Correct scheme: Лес, который мы видели из окна, казался стеной, а поле за ним было похоже на море.
- Gap 1 opens the subordinate clause который мы видели из окна.
- Gap 2 closes that subordinate clause.
- Gap 3 takes a comma before а, which joins two independent clauses in a compound sentence.
- Gap 4 takes no mark: за ним is a prepositional phrase inside the second clause and does not mark a syntactic boundary.
A dash at gap 3 is not justified: а is a coordinating conjunction between clauses, and there is no special contrastive or elliptical structure requiring a dash. A colon at gap 3 would be wrong because the second part does not explain or reveal the first; it is a separate coordinated clause.
2. How should the editor explain why a pause-based scheme fails? Use at least two gaps.
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Pauses do not coincide with syntactic boundaries. After стеной a speaker may pause for emphasis, but the grammatical boundary is before а, not a dash. After за ним a pause is also possible, but the phrase belongs to the predicate было похоже на море; a comma there would wrongly separate the prepositional modifier from its clause.
The editor should say that punctuation follows structure: the subordinate clause is enclosed by commas at 1 and 2, the compound conjunction а requires a comma at 3, and gap 4 has no syntactic boundary. The 40-character line limit may affect line breaks, but it cannot justify a dash or colon that the grammar does not support.