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ACT English Videos 162 videos

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ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?

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ACT English 2.4 Style 234 Views


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Description:

ACT English: Style Drill 2, Problem 4. Which choice is the most concise way to properly write the sentence?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by autobiographies. It's still incredible

00:09

to us that these books write themselves...

00:11

How would you correct the underlined portion below, if at all?

00:14

Jordan wrote and authored an autobiography of his life, even though he was only ten.?

00:19

00:29

We're eliminating choice (A) right from the get-go; this first sentence is crammed with

00:33

redundancies.

00:34

If we wrote something, we authored it; if we authored something, we wrote it. Plain

00:38

and simple.

00:39

Choice (C) also uses both "wrote" and "authored," so we'll get rid of that one too.

00:44

The original sentence also modifies the noun "autobiography" with the prepositional phrase

00:49

"of his life."

00:50

This is redundant because every autobiography is the story of someone's life.

00:55

We see the same mistake in choice (D), so we'll eliminate it as well.

00:58

Choice (B) is correct because it eliminates both redundancies from the original sentence

01:04

by concisely stating, "Jordan wrote an autobiography, even though he was only ten."

01:08

But he didn't have

01:09

to cover as many years as most memoirists...

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