[General] That's why I'm hesitant to help.

[Silverobama]

Someone posted two unrelated Chinese sentences in my chatroom and asked people there to help her to translate. There are many translators in my chatroom. However, no one did it until someone pointed out that those two sentences are not related and couldn't be translated at all. They are two independent sentences and there's no context at all. Then I said "That's why I'm hesitant to help because we don't have a whole context".

Is my italic sentence natural?

 

[Raymott]

Yes, except, we'd normally say "the whole context" because the context has already been defined, albeit by omission.

 

[jutfrank]

Although it is a natural thing to say*, it is not a grammatical sentence as written. However, you could quickly fix that with some appropriate punctuation.

*Provided, as Raymott says, you use the not a.

 

[Silverobama]

Although it is a natural thing to say*, it is not a grammatical sentence as written. However, you could quickly fix that with some appropriate punctuation.

*Provided, as Raymott says, you use the not a.

That's why I'm hesitant to help, because we don't have the whole context.

Is the above one better?

 

[jutfrank]

It's certainly better but it's still not good. You need more than a comma.

 

[Silverobama]

It's certainly better but it's still not good. You need more than a comma.

That's why I'm hesitant to help – because we don't have the whole context.

Is the above one better?

 

[jutfrank]

You're getting closer.

It seems that you've so far successfully noticed that the clause because we don't have the whole context is logically connected to the preceding clause by way of being extra, explanatory information. You need a punctuation mark that can clearly show that connection.

 

[Tdol]

Or the full context.

 

[Silverobama]

I already edited my post to change the en dash to em dash there. I appreciate your help, everyone.

 

[jutfrank]

I already edited my post to change the en dash to em dash there.

You shouldn't have done that, Silver. Now my post #7 makes no sense, since it was written in view of the fact that you hadn't used an em dash. And moreover, you did not change an en dash to an em dash, did you? At least not before I had responded.

In case readers are confused about what's going on, the offering that Silverobama supplied in post #6, to which my post #7 was in response, was written as two separate sentences, like this:

That's why I'm hesitant to help. Because we don't have the whole context.

 

[Silverobama]

Hmm, I did change the bigger "-" there because I was told by a friend here that I should use the em dash and I copied his em dash and corrected my post. I won't lie to my teachers.

Also, on my keyboard, the en dash is always like this "-".

 

[jutfrank]

I don't understand what you're trying to say in post #11.

In the original post #6, you had used a full stop. That's what I was responding to in post #7.

 

[Rover_KE]

... on my keyboard, the en dash is always like this "-".

That's a hyphen. Most keyboards don't have an en-dash.

Many people type two hyphens to represent an en-dash, or leave a space on both sides of a hyphen.