I need some help from an English expert.

I've got a research paper due and my instructor gave back my rough draft, saying I had a few grammar/punctuation errors in this one section, but I cant find them. Here is the area in which I made the errors:


One researcher noted that Philip K. Dick’s first sale as a writer was of his story “Roog” to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952 and his first published story was “Beyond Lies the Wub” in a 1952 issue of Planet Stories (Jensen i).


She implied that there were at least 2 errors in there, but I can't find them, except maybe a comma before and after "Roog".

Comma after the first 1952 maybe, but other than that I dunno, it sounds fine I guess?

Well it is a bit of a run on sentence. You could almost split it into two seperate sentences. In fact that's probably what I'd do. One sentence about his first sale and one about his first published work. It'd definitely make it an easier read.

Yeah, that occured to me as I was starring at it for the last few minutes. Here's one possible revision:

One researcher noted that Philip K. Dick’s first sale as a writer was of his story, “Roog,” to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952 (Jensen i). Jensen also stated that Dick’s first published story was “Beyond Lies the Wub,” which appeared in a 1952 issue of Planet Stories (Jensen i).

I don't think you should take piku's advice, Lobo.
Just look at the grammar in that post!
That was a statement, piku. No question mark.
It looks like a run-on, though. I believe it should read as thus:
"One researcher noted that Philip K. Dick’s first sale as a writer was of his story “Roog” to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952. His first published story was “Beyond Lies the Wub” in a 1952 issue of Planet Stories (Jensen i)."

...you may just be right about the commas around "Roog," though you might want to find a better way to phrase it.

Yeah, I'd break that into 2 sentences. Put the period after 1952.

I'd say it's just a matter of underlining the titles of the magazines...

Damn. It might be possible that the only errors were the magazine titles. Are they underlined or put in quotation marks?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by piku

Comma after the first 1952 maybe, but other than that I dunno, it sounds fine I guess?

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A comma definitely goes there.
The periodical titles need to be set off, probably with italics.
Perhaps the citation format is incorrect?

The sentence isn't a run-on, it's a gramatically sound complex sentence. Your teacher may suggest that you break it up as a matter of style, but it's technically correct. Generally you want to mix up short choppy sentences and long complex ones - if you only use one or the other, your writing will quickly become tiresome to read.

I can only see one fix with the sentence as it is - the split predicate needs to have both sides parallel:

Quote:

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One researcher noted that Philip K. Dick’s first sale as a writer was of his story “Roog” to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1952 and that his first published story was “Beyond Lies the Wub” in a 1952 issue of Planet Stories (Jensen i).

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But yeah, its length is a bit unwieldy.