Advanced English Learners Can Spot the Single Punctuation Error in This Text

There is only one mistake in this text here. Can you spot it? If you can't spot any mistakes in that text, or if you think you've spotted more than one, you might feel a bit confused. Only truly advanced English learners will spot the one mistake. Let's take a closer look. As I read, listen and read along with me. Try to find the mistake. Have you ever been judged for your unusual food preferences? You're not alone. While the pineapple on pizza debate is a classic, far stranger combinations exist, and they work incredibly well.

Many people swear by strawberries dipped in balsamic vinegar, which enhances the fruit's natural sweetness. Peanut butter and pickles, or tomatoes with milk. They sound wrong until you try them. My personal favorite is watermelon with feta cheese. That sweetness combined with a tang is just delicious. Next time someone criticizes your weird snack, remember that adventurous eaters often discover the best culinary secrets. Okay, I'm sure a lot of you have worked it out by now. The one mistake is punctuation. So, technically, there's one type of mistake.

There are actually seven individual punctuation mistakes in that text. In this video, we're going to correct the text and see just how important punctuation can be. I've also created a free PDF that goes with today's lesson. It contains all of the information we covered today, plus some extra tips and a bonus section with some jokes about punctuation. And I promise they are actually funny. To download that PDF for free, just click on the link in the description box or scan that QR code there. You join my mailing list and I'll send it straight to your email. Okay, let's go through each line and find the mistakes together. Okay, first line. Are there any punctuation mistakes? Here.

Think long and hard. Have you ever been judged for your unusual food preferences? Question mark. You're not alone. Nope. That's all fine. We have a question mark at the end of a question. And what do we call the line with the dot below it after alone? It's an exclamation mark or exclamation point. Exclamations are short words or phrases you say or shout to show emotion. They're more common in informal writing. Try not to use too many or it will seem like you're shouting all the time.

Okay, next line. There's one mistake here. While the pineapple on pizza debate is a classic, comma, far stranger combinations exist, semicolon, and they work incredibly well. Well, what's that funny looking symbol after exist? It's a semicolon and unfortunately it doesn't belong there. Now, semicolons aren't that common in English and using them correctly is quite tricky. So, we'll focus on one rule here. Semicolons join two related independent clauses. They can replace coordinating conjunctions like and, but, and or. We don't use those words plus a semicolon. It's a bit like saying and or but. We don't need both. So, we could have

Far stranger combinations exist semicolon, they work incredibly well. Or Far stranger combinations exist and they work incredibly well. The second is the most natural option. You can use a comma before and there, but it's optional and often not used in British English. Moving on to the next line. Two mistakes here. Try to find them. Many people swear by strawberries dipped in balsamic vinegar, which enhances the fruit's natural sweetness. Full stop. Honestly, that sounds delicious. Let me know if you've tried it. Okay, punctuation. We're missing a comma before which. Here, which introduces a non-defining relative clause. And we use a comma before these types of clauses.

In speech, commas tend to indicate a slight pause. In that sentence, the missing comma probably didn't cause you much trouble, but commas or lack of commas can completely change what you're trying to say. What's going on here? Take a look at this. Let's walk Grandpa. It seems a bit like you're going to put Grandpa on a lead and walk him like a dog. Poor Grandpa. Add a comma before Grandpa and it becomes a suggestion. Let's walk, Grandpa. Did you hear that slight pause? It's more like, let's walk, not drive, Grandpa. In spoken language, it's important to pause slightly before Grandpa to make sure our meaning is

clear. The second mistake was with fruits. The natural sweetness belongs to the fruit. So, we should have an apostrophe before the S to indicate a sort of possession. We could reword it as which enhances the natural sweetness of the fruit. Now, I have a really fun fact for you. Native speakers often incorrectly add apostrophes before a plural s. [clears throat] Look here. 2 kilos with apostrophe s of apples with apostrophe s. New delivery of carrots. Another unnecessary apostrophe in carrots. And here's a fun fact. This is so common in shops that it's called the greengrocer's apostrophe in British English. It's definitely not

just greengrocers who are guilty of this though. Remember, if you struggle with how to use any of this punctuation, or you'd like to see all of the information written down and get my best punctuation jokes, download the PDF that goes with this lesson. It's free. The link is in the description. Or you can scan that QR code there. Okay, next sentence. Is there anything wrong here? Peanut butter and pickles or tomatoes with milk dot. They sound wrong until you try them. Okay, I'm not sure about those food combinations. And there is a punctuation mistake with the two dots after milk.

Now, we have a couple of options. We could remove just one, creating a full stop, and then capitalize the T in they. But, another option is to add one more dot to form an ellipsis. An ellipsis has three dots in English, not two, not four. Some style guides recommend a space after the ellipsis, but others don't. I personally tend to use one. I think it looks smart. Here, the ellipsis represents a short pause, but it's often used to build suspense. Now, is there a mistake here? My personal favorite is watermelon with feta cheese. Semicolon. That sweetness combined with a tang is just delicious. Full stop. Nope, there's no mistake. The semicolon is used correctly and the combination of feta and watermelon is

genuinely delicious. It's one of my favorite summer salads. Try adding mint as well if you really want to go crazy. Back to semicolons. The semicolon here introduces a related independent clause and there's no coordinating conjunction to worry about. Okay, things started to go really wrong in our final sentence. There were three mistakes in our final sentence. Can you find and correct them all? Next time someone criticizes your weird snack, colon, remember that adventurous eaters often discover the best culinary secrets. Okay, and this one was a little hard for me to read out. We have the

most obvious ones if you are reading the screen right now. I know some of you like to listen to my videos. The missing capital letter at the beginning of the word next and the missing full stop at the end after secrets. But, the other mistake is in those two dots, one on top of the other. This is a punctuation mark called a colon. Colons can be used to introduce lists, explanations, and quotations among many other things. We'll concentrate on what we have in front of us and the key here is that colons should appear after an independent clause. But, next time someone criticizes your weird snack is a dependent clause. So, it shouldn't be followed by a colon to link it to another clause.

Instead, we could have a comma after snack. Or we could turn the first part into an independent clause. Next time someone criticizes your weird snack, comma, do this. Colon. Or here's what to do next time someone criticizes your weird snack. Colon. So that's it. We've corrected all seven punctuation mistakes. I hope you've seen how important punctuation can be. And now I'm going to ask you to do two things. One, write a sentence or two in the comments telling me if you've tried any of these combinations. Or if you have any other favorite weird food combinations. Try to use the correct punctuation. And second thing, I need you to go and

try watermelon with feta cheese. You won't regret it. Don't forget to download the PDF for today's video. The link's in the description or you can scan the QR code there. I will see you in the next video. Bye.