ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by Long Island. Although, to be fair, it's

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what's IN an island that really counts.

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

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Although it will always be associated with Fitzgerald's Long Island, West Egg was never

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a real place.

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The word "although" at the top of the sentence signals that the first clause is dependent,

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meaning that it can't stand on its own as a complete sentence.

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In fact, the first clause is what's known as an introductory clause, a type of clause

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that sets the stage for the main clause to come.

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Choice (B) is incorrect because it doesn't separate the introductory clause from the

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main sentence.

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Without any kind of punctuation dividing these clauses, we have ourselves a major run-on

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sentence.

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Run-ons are just exhausting for everybody involved, so we'll definitely leave (B)

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by the wayside.

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Choice (C) uses a semicolon. It's nice that it tries to throw a little punctuation in

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there, but it's not the kind of punctuation we need.

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Semicolons are used to connect independent clauses.

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Since we know that our introductory clause is totally dependent on the main sentence,

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we can nix choice (C).

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The colon that choice (D) throws at us doesn't work either.

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Sure, colons can be used to connect dependent or independent clauses, but they usually introduce

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an explanation of some kind.

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Our second clause here isn't doing anything to explain the first, so (D) is off the table.

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This means that our original sentence gets it right, by separating the introductory clause

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from the main clause with a good old-fashioned comma.

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Wait - West Egg isn't real? Sigh, first Santa Claus, now this...

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