The Semicolon in the Scholarship Essay
A student's scholarship essay includes this sentence: 'I volunteered at the shelter for three years; an experience that taught me patience.' The student's teacher flagged it but the student believes the semicolon is correct because 'both halves could stand alone.' A second sentence reads: 'The residents, who arrived each evening, taught me more than I taught them.' The student wants to remove both commas in the second sentence, arguing they are 'unnecessary.' The essay is 640 words against a 650-word limit, and the deadline is tonight.
1. Evaluate the student's reasoning about the semicolon. Is the first sentence correct, and why or why not?
Read the worked answer
The student's test-'both halves could stand alone'-is the right test, but it is misapplied here.
Check the second half: an experience that taught me patience. That is a noun phrase with a relative clause attached, not an independent clause. It has no subject-verb pair of its own standing alone. So a semicolon is wrong; a semicolon joins two independent clauses.
Repairs:
- Comma: ...for three years, an experience that taught me patience. (The phrase becomes an appositive renaming the three years.)
- Colon: ...for three years: an experience that taught me patience. (The second half explains the first.)
Either works; the comma is the safer default for an appositive. The student should also notice the trap: a semicolon feels formal and correct, but formality is not the criterion-clause structure is.
2. Should the commas in the second sentence be removed? Explain what changes if they are.
Read the worked answer
No-removing them changes the meaning, not just the punctuation.
With commas, who arrived each evening is nonrestrictive: it adds information about residents who are already fully identified. The sentence implies the writer was taught by the residents (all of them, as a group already known to the reader).
Without commas, the clause becomes restrictive: it identifies which residents taught the writer-specifically the ones who arrived each evening, as opposed to other residents. That is a different claim.
The student's 'unnecessary' label treats commas as decoration. In this sentence they carry a distinction the reader needs. If the writer means all the residents, keep the commas; if only the evening arrivals, remove them. Either way, the choice should be made on meaning, and the word count (10 words of headroom) is not a reason to strip punctuation that changes sense.