Consider the semicolon in bold, which is used to connect two sentences If it is not the best choice, replace it with a different punctuation mark. i I Kyle's family tried their hardest to keep him from finding out about his surprise party; but they could tell from his forced reaction that somebody had given the secret away.

The semicolon in the sentence is not the best choice because it is used incorrectly with a coordinating conjunction ("but"). Instead, a comma should be used before the conjunction to properly connect the two independent clauses. Here is the corrected sentence:<br /><br />Kyle's family tried their hardest to keep him from finding out about his surprise party, but they could tell from his forced reaction that somebody had given the secret away.