Driving to
the mall last week my car was near disappearing in a pothole: deciding to call
the cities administration reporting the problem, I was hoping the problem was
to be fixed quickly however its still their and its to be avoided.
1. Dangling
modifier: There is no subject for “driving to the mall”—currently the only one
available is the car”. Therefore it needs a subject such as “ When I was
driving …” That is now an adverb clause of time—it needs to be followed by a
comma.
2. Wording: “was near disappearing” is bad
grammar and non-idiomatic—reword to something such as “nearly disappeared.”
3. Gerund
or infinitive? The gerund “reporting” doesn’t work here; use the infinitive ‘to
report.”
4.
Possessive: “Cities” is a plural form; the singular possessive is needed—city’s
(no capital).
5. Verb
form: instead of “was to be” use the modal passive “would be.”
6. Word
confusion: When “its’ means “it is”, use an apostrophe (it’s); when “their”
refers to a place and is not a possessive pronoun, use “there.”
7. Awkward
wording: “to be avoided” is awkward in this sentence—it would be more usual to
use “should be avoided.”
8.
Punctuation: replace the colon with a semicolon. The comma after “problem” is
insufficient—more of a break is needed. Use either a semicolon or a period. The
word “however” separates 2 independent clauses—either make them separate
sentences or separate them with a semicolon. After an introductory “however”,
use a comma. In the last sentence, “and” separated 2 independent clause; use a
comma after “there.”
Possible Answer: When I was driving to the mall last week, my
car nearly disappeared in a pothole. I decided to call the city’s
administration to report the problem. I
was hoping the problem would be fixed quickly; however, it’s still there, and
it should be avoided.
