What's wrong with this sentence?

[MsAwesomeDragon]

This is part of dd2s homework. She needs to identify three errors in this sentence, but she (and I) can only find 2.

The police managed to seize the robber and return Ellies handbag

Word of warning, not sure how true it is for other people but I've heard similar from some others also, ur 5 does seem to sometimes be where things fall apart a bit. Kids basically start to go ferel ( yr 6 worse though) and well the homework is just inconsistent shall we say. Either doesn't make sense. Ambiguous. Actually appears wrong. Very little feed back etc

Keep an eye on what shes doing and whether it is correct. I dont mean her work on it correct I mean correct as in is it answerable and not full of mistakes in itself.

Pissing myself at "capital H for Handbag" 😂😂😂

Well they've got a very young nqt this year, with some tricky characters in the class (I know most of them from out of school clubs). So I fully expect to have to fill some gaps myself this year. I'm perfectly happy doing this for maths (although I shouldn't really have to), but spag is another thing entirely. I will keep referring back to twinkl for more resources :)

I don't mean any disrespect to nqts there by the way, I am just aware that she'll have a steep learning curve this year. I'm really hoping I get a pleasant surprise and she is amazing very quickly.

Rules of grammar state no comma before and

Dd2 recently had a nqt. She was the best teacher shes had so far.

Personally I'd worry more about the ones who have been there a while and have perhaps had enough

@daisypond
Robbery and theft are different crimes

The teacher has made a mistake typing the worksheet.

Most likely they originally started either 'The' or 'Ellie' with a lower-case letter, but Word autocorrected it and they didn't notice.

I'm genuinely not bashing any nqt. They are very often very energetic, and work very hard. I'm just thinking back to when I was an nqt, and truthfully, I was a bit shit . Luckily, nobody held it against me. I'm a brilliant teacher now I've got a bit more experience behind me.

DD has had some brilliant teachers, so there's a high bar to try and be the best yet. The best teacher she's had was an experienced teacher with kids about the same age as DD, she seemed to "get" DD more than any other teacher so far, as well as being able to manage some tricky behaviour and include the children with sen seamlessly.

Hm, I’d go with ‘returned’ ‘ not ‘return’. There is also something amiss with the whole sentence. The signifier is unclear (who or what returned Ellie’s handbag?) ‘Managed to seize’ is inelegant, if not ungrammatical; ‘the police seized’ would be better.

ivykaty Yes, I know robbery and theft are different crimes. That’s why I thought robber should be thief. But there’s perhaps not enough context to judge.

Bump! I want to know the answer

It's been marked. The comma before and is what they were looking for.

I still wouldn't write it with a comma, but I probably wouldn't ever write that sentence to be fair.

If it was returned, I'd use a comma. Funny one.

Yeah, that's not right. I don't know the technical term but putting the comma there separates the "return E's handbag" from the "managed to" bit that refers to it.

oh no a comma there is all kinds of wrong! Would you pause? The police managed to seize the robber (breath) and return Ellie's handbag. wth? I don't think so,

Okay so I don't agree! Are they saying the handbag clause is subordinate? Because it's not!

I think that is very odd. I’m a professional editor and would mark that comma as incorrect. It’s a grammatical mistake that I often give feedback on.

I'm a professional editor too and it's wrong in UK English. Americans are freer with commas before and. We have the Oxford comma, but this isn't one.

So it definitely wasn't capital h for Handbag then? :o

That is incorrect. I'm a fan of commas but there shouldn't be one in that sentence.
Mark it and send it back again!
What else is your DD being mistaught?

I too don't think the comma is necessary, an apostrophe before the 's' in 'Ellies' is correct. Full stop at the end.
'Seize' is correct, 'i before e' doesn't apply here - and in many other words.

The op knows that but wondered if the teacher wrote it wrong (deliberately) to begin with but then autocorrect corrected it for herm

Definitely not capital H for handbag, no

I don't believe the comma should be there, I'm not convinced the teacher really knows the rules about commas, but I'm also not up in arms about it. I'm not entirely certain about the rules of commas myself, and yet I have managed to get to the grand old age of 40 without it mattering too much (yet I did use one in that sentence, whether it should be there or not, I needed a breath). I even managed to do a degree and write school reports without anyone noticing my lack of knowledge about commas.

The teacher is brand new, in her first year of teaching, with an awful lot to take in right now. She's got bigger fish to fry, she doesn't need an arsey parent being pedantic over commas in a homework she probably found on the internet or in a school scheme of work. If I start noticing loads of mistakes I'll mention it, but not for just one error I want sure of myself.

If you're going to set homework that is about correcting mistakes, you have to choose things that are absolutely 100% unambiguously incorrect or it just doesn't work.

While there are some grammatical 'rules' about commas, they are, on the whole, a matter of style - and the example she chose here just isn't suitable.

Unlike capital 'H' for Handbag - that's always required. ;-)