ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Editing Videos 21 videos
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times} Want to pull an Oliver Twist and ask us for more? We've gotcha covered. Head over to...
PSAT 1.9 Writing Diagnostic 182 Views
Share It!
Description:
PSAT 1.9 Writing Diagnostic. How would you change the underlined portion of the passage, if at all?
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak in and here's your smoked You
- 00:05
sure brought to you by the summer solstice Finally an
- 00:07
occasion on which you can honestly say you've had a
- 00:10
long day All right check the passage Gotz is beginnings
- 00:14
which we've only red eighteen Ready skimming forty thousand three
Full Transcript
- 00:18
thousand picture citations Any it's one level of law and
- 00:23
order and oh yeah we got it really in Okay
- 00:27
here we go How would you change the bolo underlined
- 00:29
portion of the passage if it all north of the
- 00:32
tropic of cancer and hear the potential answers changes here
- 00:37
Alright well welcome to punctuation nation where no klaus ever
- 00:40
ends without the proper punctuation period Here we've got a
- 00:44
sentence with a clause that ends in a comma And
- 00:47
the only difference between that and the other answer choices
- 00:49
is that any minute piece of punctuation should it instead
- 00:53
be an m dash as option b suggests or is
- 00:57
c right that it should be a period Or does
- 00:59
this occasion call for a semi colon is d would
- 01:01
have us believe Well whatever the answer an exclamation point
- 01:04
isn't one of the choices so this sentence can't be
- 01:07
that exciting let's review the source sentence before we jump
- 01:10
to any hasty conclusions actually signing his thirty seven miles
- 01:14
to the north of the tropic of cancer The true
- 01:15
distance between alexandria and signing is four hundred fifty three
- 01:18
miles and not five hundred tiny life Three degrees thirty
- 01:21
minutes east of the meridian of alexandra and difference of
- 01:23
latitude coming alexandra and signing being seven degrees five minutes
- 01:27
rather than seven degrees twelve minutes The number veritas anees
- 01:29
had calculated All right so that's a mouthful but there's
- 01:33
a good reason for us to read all of it
- 01:35
You'll see why in a minute for starters the comic
- 01:37
can't possibly be correct Comets are either used to separate
- 01:40
listed items within a clause as in i went to
- 01:43
the store and pick up bread milk eggs and a
- 01:45
nerve super soaker or two separate clauses in a sentences
- 01:49
and she brought home the groceries but drop them all
- 01:53
When i doused her with water from the super soaker
- 01:55
she had just purchased here we've got a siri's of
- 01:57
separate distinct thoughts so a comma ain't gonna cut it
- 02:01
it's not going to be an m dash because that
- 02:03
type of punctuation is usually used to set off two
- 02:06
phrases however because we've got numerous phrases here in list
- 02:09
for me m dash in dash away So if he
- 02:11
is out of the running is it c period Well
- 02:15
technically that could work since we have arrived at the
- 02:17
end of what could logically be considered its own sentence
- 02:20
But here's where it's important that we read the entire
- 02:23
thing from the beginning to the end while correct if
- 02:26
we were in her place all the semi colons herewith
- 02:29
periods we wind up with a very staccato unnatural sounding
- 02:32
siri's of sentences that are just screaming to be tied
- 02:35
together Somehow a semicolon pulls off this trick quite nicely
- 02:38
which is why he is our answer And we're way 00:02:41.27 --> [endTime] more than semi sure about it will you
Related Videos
PSAT 1.1 Reading Diagnostic. The main purpose of the first two paragraphs is to...what?
PSAT 2.2 Reading Diagnostic. What is the main rhetorical effect of this phrase in the second paragraph?
PSAT 1.3 Writing Diagnostic. To make the paragraph most logical, sentence 2 in the second paragraph should be placed...where?
PSAT 1.4 Writing Diagnostic. Which choice most effectively combines the two sentences in the underlined portion?
PSAT 1.5 Writing Diagnostic. How should the underlined portion be changed in the passage, if at all?