Please, sentence help! Forum

[billmon]

Similar to my time in XXX and XXX, I want to go to law school to become a proactive, educated and an involved student of the law; with my background providing a wealth of benefits to the Law classroom.

Semi colon troubles

Clean water is the backbone of life, and allowing basic human needs such as education, cooking, farming and health means access to potable water is essential.

This one just feels weird.

Any help is greatly appreciated, THANKS.

[BaiAilian2013]

Similar to my time in XXX and XXX, I want to go to law school to become a proactive, educated and an involved student of the law; with my background providing a wealth of benefits to the Law classroom.

Semi colon troubles

Yep, you need a comma here instead. "With... classroom" is not an independent clause. You also don't want the "an" before "involved," and "law" doesn't need to be capitalized.

[billmon]

Great. Any thoughts on the second sentences?

[giddyfish]

Clean water is the backbone of life, and allowing basic human needs such as education, cooking, farming and health means access to potable water is essential.

Rearrange the ideas around. Also, why are those specifically the basic human needs? What's the difference between portable and clean water? Is it the same thing? I feel that what you're trying to express is ambiguous, never mind the grammatical structure.

For the first sentence, you can replace similar to my time with likewise. Delete everything after the semicolon.

[Dany]

What about:

Clean, potable water is the backbone of life, and it is essential to fulfilling basic human needs such as education, cooking, farming and health.

That's much cleaner and easier to read.

[billmon]

Perfect, I really appreciate your help!

[Dany]

No problem, and BaiAilian2013 is correct about the first sentence.