What's wrong with this sentence: My baby sister Athirah, the apple of my eyes...

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hello,

I’m now writing Acknowledgements for my thesis and I keep on getting the green lines when I type this sentence in Word. What’s wrong with it?

My baby sister Athirah, the apple of my eyes, the love of my life.

Any opinion would be appreciated.Thanks.

2

Hi NinaZara

MS Word is apparently alerting you to the fact that there is no verb and therefore it is not a sentence. What happens when you remove the period (full stop)? :smiley:

Amy

3

The usual expression is 'the apple of my eye’.

Maybe that’s what the fuss is all about! :slight_smile:

4

Good eye, Conchita. :smiley:

5

Thanks ladies.

I tried changing it to ‘the apple of my eye’ but that didn’t work either.Thanks anyway for clearing that up for me, I was torn between but decided ‘eyes’ is the logical one.

Anyway I changed the sentence to

My baby sister, Athirah, the apple of my eye, the love of my life, the angel whose presence alone keeps me strong and motivated.

but still, I cannot get rid of the crazy, nutty, rotten green lines!

Any tips? or else I’m just going to be stubborn and leave it that way :oops:

6

Could it be the proper noun, Athirah, that isn’t recognised by your proofreader?

Apart from that, your sentence is still incomplete, Nina! What if you insert ‘is’ after ‘Athirah’?

7

Assuming this is to be part of a list of people (list of Acknowledgements), a grammatically complete sentence isn’t necessary.

Options for doing battle with little green MS Word lines: 8)

  1. Remove the period[color=green].
  2. Highlight the entire sentence fragment, right click the mouse and tell the MS proofreader to ignore the problem.
  3. Change the wording to this:
    My baby sister, Athirah, who is the apple of my eye, the love of my life, and the angel whose presence alone keeps me strong and motivated [size=92](added = ‘who is’, removed = ‘.’)[/size]
  4. To convince MS Word’s spell-checker (forever!) that your sister’s name is a correctly spelled word, highlight her name, right click and tell the spell-checker to ‘Add’ this name to its list of correctly spelled words.

:smiley:
Amy

8

Amy,

You assumed right. I was making a list of people and I am finally ridded of the green lines when i put ‘who is’.

Again, Amy and Conchita, thanks for pointing my mistakes out and for the tips too.

Happy sunday!