ACT English 1.14 Passage Drill

It’s important for us to take a good look at our writing and ask ourselves if there’s

any material that can be removed. If there's redundant or irrelevant information, it needs

to be cut because it can obscure the main point.

However, it's also important to be sure that we don't cut too much from our work.

If we go edit-crazy, then we run the risk of losing essential thoughts and ideas.

So we're going to put ourselves in this writer's shoes and assess how the sentence

fits in with the big picture. (Let's hope those shoes have been deodorized.)

Choice (A) is a cinch to eliminate because it's flat-out wrong. The sentence doesn't

give us one clue about the formation of nuts, so cutting it wouldn't remove that information

from the essay as a whole.

Freud would tell you that nuts are formed by bad childhoods.

We may be oversimplifying on that one.

(B) is an easy elimination as well. Nowhere does the sentence say that nuts grow slowly.

Anyway, whoever thinks that nuts grow slowly has never heard of the ever-expanding acorn

of Guadalajara.

OK, that was an example of a sentence that could be cut from our own writing because

it was totally untrue. This brings us to choices (C) and (D).

(D) disses the sentence by calling it irrelevant, but (C) disagrees, saying that if the sentence

were cut, we'd lose this scintillating explanation of what qualifies as a true nut. We're going

to side with (C) on this one and dub it the correct answer. The topic of nuts is introduced

so that the reader understands the difference between nuts and coconuts, especially because

the word "nut" is part of the fruit's name. This particular sentence identifies what it

is about a true nut that makes it different from a coconut.

We guess that means a coconut is a false nut. Can we ever trust one again?