I am trying to improve my grammar (British or UK English) and struggling with the following:
It didn’t matter what the job was: paint a fence, load a lorry or dig a hole - the price he would quote was always the same, ‘Give us a quid’.
The above seems ok, but I wonder if it is correct.
My considerations are:
- It's kind of a list so a colon seems appropriate
- The second independent clause needs to be 'linked' but to use a semicolon would complicate things because I have already used a colon, a comma may seem confusing, so I have used an em dash.
- Would it be better as two separate sentences, as in:
It didn’t matter what the job was: paint a fence, load a lorry or dig a hole. The price he would quote was always the same, ‘Give us a quid’.
This last option seems correct but destroys the flow.
Lastly, should it be at the end - ‘Give us a quid’ ? I ask because usually the period would be inside the quotes - ‘Give us a quid.' but it is at the end of a sentence.
