I'm writing a story and I want to use the line
to the place I was once separated, I will return.
Now my question is, do I have to use "separated from" or can I simply keep it as "separated."
Sentence Construction – ‘To the Place I Was Once Separated, I Will Return’
differencesentence-constructionword-usage
Best Answer
You need the "from"; without it, you might be implying that you yourself were broken into pieces!
The grammar rules are: "Separate", as a standalone verb, speaks of one united thing being divided. This is true whether it's transitive ("I separated the bread into slices") or intransitive ("The cell separated, forming two new cells"). The verb "separate" can also be used as you're doing here, to talk about segregating or parting two or more things that are already distinct; this use is a prepositional verb and requires "from": "I separated the pebbles from the beans." "The car's engine has been separated from the frame."
By the way, I hope you intend a poetic and unusual word order; a normal syntax might be "I will return to the place I was once separated from." The inverted syntax is perfectly acceptable under poetic license, as long as you want a lofty or poetic tone.