ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by orb-weavers. Putting regular weavers to shame.

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How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

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Focusing

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And here are the potential answers...

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Let's begin by reading the sentence as is. Maybe we'll get lucky, and it'll be perfect.

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Fingers crossed.

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"Focusing on orb-weavers because their webs are the most recognizable."

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No such luck. There's definitely a problem here.

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Who came up with that "fingers crossed" thing anyway?

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Option (A) is incorrect because kicking things off with the word "focusing" makes the sentence incomplete.

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The word "focusing" fools us into thinking the sentence is beginning with a gerund phrase,

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which is a type of phrase that functions as a noun.

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In this case, it sounds like the gerund phrase is going to be the subject of the sentence.

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However, there's no verb to tell us what the phrase "focusing on orb-weavers because their

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webs are the most recognizable" does.

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Though we suspect that focusing on orb-weavers can't do anything good for anybody.

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Long story short: every subject needs a verb if it wants to make a complete sentence--even

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if that subject is an entire phrase.

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Option (A) is out.

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(D) suggests we begin the sentence with "We'll have a focus." This doesn't work, though,

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because "have a focus" is an awkward language construct.

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Incidentally, we like to have our focus with a side of fries.

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Answer (B) isn't great either.

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"We're to focus" makes it sound like someone is requiring that the paragraph focus on orb-weavers.

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Sure, it's possible some obsessive spider-lover is standing over the author in a Spider Man

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suit demanding the orb-weaver focus, but that's unlikely.

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We hope.

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The correct answer is (C).

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"We will focus" makes the sentence complete and doesn't throw any linguistic curveballs our way.

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Excuse us while we go lock our door. We're kinda worried that guy in the Spider Man suit

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is creeping our way.

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