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ACT English 1.4 Sentence Structure 302 Views


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ACT English: Sentence Structure Drill 1, Problem 4. Which punctuation fits best?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by participles. Hey, it's your participle,

00:09

you can cry if you want to.

00:10

How should you change the highlighted portion below, if at all?

00:13

Coach Dietz exemplified unprofessional behavior by walking off the field in the middle of

00:19

a game. Leaving her team at a time when we needed her.?

00:29

Verbals are derived from verbs, but they serve different functions from their original verb

00:34

form.

00:34

Here, "leaving" is based on the verb "leave," but the "ing" ending and its function in the

00:40

sentence magically transform it into a type of verbal known as a participle.

00:44

"Leaving" introduces the participle phrase, "Leaving her team at a time when we needed

00:49

her."

00:50

Participles and participle phrases always function as adjectives, which means that they

00:54

have to be attached to a noun or pronoun that they modify in some way.

00:59

The participle phrase in question here is describing, or modifying, Coach Dietz, who

01:04

either just can't take the heat, or has a serious lack of team spirit.

01:07

However, it's well nigh impossible for a participle phrase to do its job of modifying something,

01:12

when there's a period getting in its way.

01:14

In order for it to describe Coach Dietz, it needs some kind of punctuation to keep it

01:18

attached to the previous sentence.

01:20

Therefore, we know that choice (A) is incorrect.

01:22

The period that's keeping our phrase apart from the word it's trying to modify actually

01:26

turns it into a fragment.

01:28

What can we say? Participle phrases just aren't good with being alone...

01:31

Choice (C) does try to bridge the gap by using a bit of punctuation.

01:34

Unfortunately, semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses.

01:37

Since our modifying participle phrase is totally dependent in the first sentence, we can say

01:42

sayonara to choice (C).

01:43

Choice (D) tries to connect the two sentences with a colon, but this doesn't work either.

01:47

Colons can only be used to connect an independent clause to something else, like a list or another

01:52

independent clause.

01:53

The trouble here is that "Coach Dietz exemplified unprofessional behavior by walking off the

01:56

field in the middle of," is not an independent clause.

01:59

It just sounds weird, right? Putting the colon there breaks up the prepositional phrase "of

02:05

the game" in a way that just isn't natural.

02:07

We can definitely take (D) out of the running.

02:09

Choice (B) wins the day by correctly using a comma to connect the participle phrase to

02:13

the first sentence.

02:15

Now our modifying phrase can describe Coach Dietz's bad behavior without anything standing

02:19

its way...although we're guessing that Dietz would rather the phrase keep its modifying

02:23

to itself...

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