Question

The Human Resources department is happy to announce a career development workshop. Led by Joseph Pelletier. He has 20 years of experience in career development training. Joseph will help you gain a clearer understanding of your career goals. He will discuss tools to work toward those goals. The workshop will take place November 10 and 11. From 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. There will be coffee and tea, lunch will also be provided. If you are interested, please respond to this e-mail to sign up, only 40 spaces are available.

How could you improve this message? Check all that apply.

Correct comma splices.
Do not use simple sentences.
Increase sentence lengths.
Vary sentence types.
Correct fragments.

Answer 1

The answer is: correct comma splices, increase sentence lengths and correct fragments.

A comma splice is a wrong separation between two main clauses by using a comma. For example:

"If you are interested, please respond to this e-mail to sign up - only 40 spaces are available."

Sentences could be improved by increasing their length. For instance, the next two sentences could be joined using a comma.

"The workshop will take place November 10 and 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m."

Finally, sentence fragments are groups of words that do not indicate complete thoughts. To become sentences, they need to have an independent clause with a subject and a verb, so that it can stand on its own. For example, the fragment "Led by Joseph Pelletier" could join the previous independent clause:

"The Human Resources department is happy to announce a career development workshop, which is led by Joseph Pelletier."

Answer 2

We can improve this message by:

- Correcting comma slices.

- Varying sentence types.

- Correcting fragments.

Message improved:

The Human Resources department is happy to announce a career development workshop led by Joseph Pelletier. He has 20 years of experience in career development training and he will help you gain a clearer understanding of your career goals. Joseph will discuss tools to work toward those goals. The workshop will take place November 10 and 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. There will be coffee and tea, lunch will also be provided. If you are interested, you shoud respond to this e-mail if you haven't done it yet. Only 40 spaces are available!