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ACT English 4.4 Punctuation 329 Views


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Description:

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 4, Problem 4. Where should the dash be placed in this sentence?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by "breaks in thought." Our brains were

00:07

in a cast for a month after delivering this one...

00:13

How should you change the below sentence to make it correct, if at all?

00:16

To some of you—my essay may seem good even brilliant.

00:29

Dashes can also be used to emphasize a break in thought, an afterthought, or a clarification.

00:38

So, to figure this one out, we need to identify the natural fault lines in the sentence.

00:42

We can tell right off the bat that (A) is incorrect because, while we generally need

00:45

a pause after an opening prepositional phrase like "To some of you..."

00:49

...putting a dash there brings things to too much of a halt.

00:52

It's kind of like being behind somebody who's just way too cautious at stop signs.

00:58

Choice (B) is even more wonky.

00:59

The dash pops up in the middle of the thought, breaking the sentence up in a way that doesn't make sense.

01:04

It's sort of like a highway that just randomly ends for no reason.

01:07

Well, (C) does get some brownie points from us because it uses a comma to separate the

01:12

prepositional phrase at the beginning of the sentence.

01:14

Before it does a victory dance, though, we have to cross it out for wonky dash use.

01:18

(D) is the one that shows them all how it's done.

01:22

The two modifiers, "good" and "even brilliant," are separate ideas...so they

01:27

need to be separated in some way.

01:29

A comma would also work here, but the dash helps to really emphasize just how good this essay might be.

01:34

Choice (A) shows us how to a break a thought with flair.

01:37

We hope our thoughts never break, but if they do, we'll try to glue them back together with a dash.

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