Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Captain Corea]

Of the following, which one is correct?

"His father was Kenyan, and his mother American."

or

"His father was Kenyan and his mother was an American."

or both?

[schwa]

How about neither of the above?

In the first sentence both the comma & "and" serve the same function. I'd lose one or the other.

In the second sentence you've got a parallelism problem. Go with either "Kenyan ... American" or "a Kenyan ... an American."

[losing_touch]

[The Cosmic Hum]

good advice in the above posts.

If it is your intention to write a compound sentence, you may just want to insert a verb in the dependent clause in your first sentence.
His father was Kenyan, and his mother was American.
or you can use ellipsis and simplify, as was noted above.
His father was Kenyan, his mother American.(not formal grammar)
There are numerous combinations for this; however, your two example sentences both require editing.

[Captain Corea]