I am wondering if my sentence sounds natural.
Sabina loved her husband immensely and, watching him suffer from cancer, made her feel sad.
Last edited by Bassim; 05-Mar-2017 at 22:47.
Sabina's husband isn't a woman. You could write Sabina loved her husband immensely and, watching him suffer from cancer, made him feel sad but I don't think that's what you mean. (It means that Sabina made her husband sad.)
I think these two sentences convey the meaning you're after: Sabina loved her husband immensely. Watching him suffer from cancer made her feel sad.
I am not a teacher.
The commas are the problem in the original. Remove them and it's correct and means what you want it to.
Remember - if you don't use correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing, anything you write will be incorrect.
Thank you again for your corrections.
I wrote this sentence because I wanted to see if I can use "bracketing commas" correctly. But apparently, my commas only made my sentence unclear.
Both commas are wrong.
We don't put a comma between subjects and immediately-following predicates. In the second part of your sentence, watching him suffer from cancer is the subject of the clause, and made him feel sad is the predicate.
The first comma is unnecessary because we don't normally use a comma after coordinating conjunctions (in this case, and).
jutfrank,
Thank you so much for your good and useful explanation. You opened my eyes. The problem is that I did not see that "watching him suffer from cancer" is the subject and other part of the sentence the predicate. And when you do not see the whole sentence and do not recognise different parts of the sentence, you are likely to make mistakes like I do.
Bassim, as an exercise, write the corrected sentence below.
Here is my second try:
Sabina loved her husband immensely and watching him suffer from cancer made her feel sad.
Try to get into the habit of seeing your sentences in this way, then.Originally Posted by Bassim
I would put a comma after "immensely" in post #8.
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