Writing: Sentence boundaries — Example 2

- [Instructor] In response to fears of a chocolate shortage, farmers are looking to a high-yielding variety of cocoa tree, which was developed by Ecuadorian agronomist Homero Castro. So this was a bit strange that we end a sentence, and then we start a sentence with which was developed by Ecuadorian agronomist Homero Castro, because this right by itself, this isn't a sentence. This isn't a sentence by itself. This feels like this which is referring, it's giving us more, more explanation of this high-yielding variety of cocoa tree, so I definitely don't want to separate it as a separate sentence, so I'm gonna change it, so I'm gonna scratch out no change, so let's look at this choice. So this says farmers are looking to a high-yielding variety of cocoa tree, comma, which was developed by Ecuadorian agronomist Homero Castro. So this one feels quite good. I would use a comma and just go straight to the which. So this one looks right, so let's look at the other choices. Farmers are looking to a high-yielding variety of cocoa tree, and that tree was developed by Ecuadorian agronomist Homero Castro. Well this is just unnecessarily wordy. We're using the word tree twice, so I don't like that one. And then this last choice is just like the second choice, but instead of a comma, we have a semicolon. And the reason why I like a comma more than a semicolon, I imagine I've used semicolon, the separating two clauses, that can almost stand on themselves, and in fact, sometimes, they can stand on themselves, but there's a semicolon to kind of show that they are related. While a comma is, for the most part, separating clauses that can't stand, the first one can stand on by themselves. In response to fears of a chocolate shortage, farmers are looking to a high-yielding variety of cocoa tree, that can stand by itself, but the second clause has trouble standing by itself. In fact, it can't stand as a sentence, which was developed by Ecuadorian agronomist Homero Castro, so I feel good about the comma right over here, and you know, you don't need to over complicate things if the simpler tool works.