report every last mistake you made in them to your Father.
father
After all, he's been gracious enough about being ordered by your Father to accompany you to the sect.
father
If he wishes to keep the curtains closed then they'll remain closed- even if there is no reason to do so besides to annoy and infuriate you. "Cousin, perhaps we could-"
closed—even
could—"
uncle
Your eyes widen and you grab the top of the box eagerly. A quick jerk draws the ornate lid away from the body, revealing-
...an incomplete charm.
revealing—
But from the look on his face- that of a stern taskmaster with a dash of smug bookkeeper sprinkled over it- there was no mistake.
face—that
it—there
You blink once, twice, in confusion, and Kong De's serpent-like smile grows.
serpentine
It was crafted by my Father
father
Father—
Being commissioned for such an undertaking is a breathtaking honor- not to mention how much they were paying.
honor—not
seems—"
If you cannot complete this small challenge then he states that this charm would be too complex for you to handle.
Missing ending quotation mark.
The dependent clause here implies that only in the case of failing the task will our father state that the charm is too complex for us. Ergo, a rephrasing:
If you cannot complete this small challenge, he stated that this charm would then be too complex for you to handle."
But hold it back you do- and you turn your focus to the box.
do—and
An explanation of my corrections:
The Blue Book of Grammar said:
Rule 6b. Capitalize relatives' family names (kinship names) when they immediately precede a personal name, or when they are used alone in place of a personal name.
Examples:
I found out that Mom is here.
You look good, Grandpa.
Andy and Opie loved Aunt Bee's apple pies.
However, these monikers are not capitalized when they are used with possessive nouns or pronouns, or when they follow the personal name, or when they do not refer to a specific person.
Examples:
My mom is here.
Joe's grandpa looks well.
The James brothers were notorious robbers.
There's not one mother I know who would allow that.
I suspect you'll get a lot of practice in this setting.
Moving on to dashes, they come in
three varieties: the hyphen (-), the en dash (–), and the em dash (—). What you used as an em dash is a
suspended hyphen, used thus: Ten- and eleven-year-olds enter puberty. Not a stellar example, but I'm not a stellarator at midnight.
For a longer take on dashes, consider
this album I compiled or Googling (unknown how much luck you would find there, but some sources are
amazing) for information.
As a side note, your word processor will probably spit out an em dash if you type two hyphens. This might not always work out, so using search to find hyphens (--) and replacing it with them (--) works, though modern word processors are vastly more stable in my experience. Same goes for quotation marks (although ' and " are technically foot and inch marks, they'll be converted into curly quotation marks). NB: Since you're
fond of
aposiopesis, I'll tell you now dashes and quotation marks don't play nice. You usually get a result like this at the end of a sentence:
It seems--" into
It seems—" instead of
It seems—"
To avoid this, you can simply add another quotation mark, and it'll be turned into the other variant (whichever you need):
It seems--""
It seems—""
You can then just delete the variant you don't need.
Alternatively, use
character codes to produce glyphs you want like I do (very few to memorize, trustworthy).
By the way, the singular form is
die. The plural form is
dice.
)
