Question

Is this sentence correctly punctuated?

Soon after they​ hatch, plover chicks can walk on their own​, however they cannot fly​, for at least a​ month, making it difficult for them to evade the human onslaught on sunny summer days.

Answer 1

The original sentence is incorrectly punctuated; a semicolon or a conjunction is needed before 'however' to properly connect the independent clauses.

Step-by-step explanation:

The sentence in question is not punctuated correctly. The use of 'however' needs to be managed with a conjunction or a semicolon to properly connect the independent clauses. The revised sentence should be something like: 'Soon after they hatch, plover chicks can walk on their own; however, they cannot fly for at least a month, making it difficult for them to evade the human onslaught on sunny summer days.' This corrects the run-on nature of the sentence and clarifies the relationship between the two ideas.

Answer 2

This sentence is not correctly punctuated.

The correct version would be:

"Soon after they​ hatch, plover chicks can walk on their own​. However, they cannot fly​ for at least a​ month, making it difficult for them to evade the human onslaught on sunny summer days".

The conector "however" appears almost aways at the beginning of the sentence. In some rare cases it may appear between commas, but only when followed by a verb; or a the end of the sentence. Therefore, we need to separe this sentence in two and place a comma after "however".

The comma before the phrase "for at least a month" is incorrect because the phrase is modifying the verb "fly", so they cannot be separated. By putting a comma before and one after it, we transform the phrase into a parenthetical phrase that makes no sense withing the sentence.