Question the-ha
The haiku-like poems of Tomas Tranströmer, which present nature- and dream-influenced images in crisp, spare language, have earned the Swedish poet praise from leading contemporary blank them Nigerian American essayist and novelist Teju Cole, who has written that Tranströmer’s works “contain a luminous simplicity.”
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
writers. Among
writers among
writers; among
writers, among
The haiku-like poems of Tomas Tranströmer, which present nature- and dream-influenced images in crisp, spare
Hard-difficulty · SAT Reading & Writing · Boundaries — Parenthetical punctuation: commas, dashes, parentheses. Read the question above, select your answer, and check the full explanation below to understand exactly why the correct choice works.
Answer explanation
Choice D is the best answer. The convention being tested is punctuation use between a main clause and a supplementary phrase. This choice correctly uses a comma to mark the boundary between the main clause (“The haiku-like…writers”) and the supplementary phrase (“among…Cole”) that specifies a contemporary writer who has praised Tomas Tranströmer’s haiku-like poems.
Choice A is incorrect because it results in a rhetorically unacceptable sentence fragment beginning with “among.” Choice B is incorrect because it fails to mark the boundary between the main clause and the supplementary phrase with appropriate punctuation. Choice C is incorrect because a semicolon can’t be used in this way to join the main clause (“The haiku-like…writers”) and the supplementary phrase (“among…Cole”).
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