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Anonymous

Whats the english error???

I have a friend whom I have never met;

A friend whose name is John;

I have never shaken hands with him,

Nor his countenance gazed upon.

What is the mistake in this poem?

Top 8 Answers
Lea A

Favorite Answer

The semi-colon after ‘met’ is the only error I see; change it to a comma and you should be all set. ‘A friend whose name is John’ is not an independent clause (i.e. it can’t stand alone as a sentence) and therefore can’t be joined to the first line with a semi-colon.
2

bh8153
Yes, Lea A (answerer 7) is spot on.

With the semicolon at the end of line 1, the first two lines are talking about two different friends, one whom the author has never met, and another whose name is John. The next two lines do not relate properly to the previous lines.

With a comma at the end of line 1 instead, the whole poem is about the same friend.

0

Anonymous
Not really sure, grammar-wise, but this sounds better:

I have a friend I’ve never met

A friend whose name is John

I’ve never shaken hands with him

Nor his countenance gazed upon..

I’m sure other more grammar-savvy readers could help more than I could, but those are my thoughts on it!!

0

Double O
‘What is’ should be abbreviated as What’s, not ‘whats’

I have a friend ‘who’ not ‘whom’

“The traditional rules for choosing between who and whom are relatively simple but not always easy to apply. Who is used where a nominative pronoun such as I or he would be appropriate, that is, for the subject of a verb or for a predicate nominative; whom is used for a direct or indirect object or for the object of a preposition.”

0

my2fuzzyslippers
There usually is no punctuation on the ends of the lines in poems.
0

Mee
After the third verse, there is a comma, not a semi-colon.

Maybe that’s it??

0

havenjohnny
You spelled my name wrong
1

Toby G*
who’s instead of whose ; )
0

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