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ACT English 4.2 Punctuation 368 Views
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Description:
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 4, Problem 2. Which choice properly formats the question?
Transcript
- 00:04
Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by question marks. They got here fast because
- 00:07
they weren't afraid to ask for directions.
- 00:10
How should you change the below sentence to make it correct, if at all?
- 00:13
She asked whether the sentence ended here?
- 00:21
This is one of those sneaky sentences that's not necessarily a question as a whole, but
Full Transcript
- 00:25
is harboring a question inside of it.
- 00:28
So we know the original sentence is incorrect, because by putting the question mark at the
- 00:31
end, it makes it seem like someone is asking whether the girl asked something.
- 00:35
Not that someone couldn't do that, but it doesn't seem to be what's going on here.
- 00:38
We can get rid of choice (B) for the exact same reason.
- 00:41
Nobody's asking whether she's asking anything.
- 00:44
We can nix (C) for the same reason, and also because "whether" is a conjunction that generally
- 00:49
signals a choice, not a question.
- 00:52
This leaves us with (D), the correct answer.
- 00:53
See, the quotation marks separate the direct question from the rest of the sentence, making
- 00:58
the sentence a statement about someone asking something,
- 01:00
instead of a question about someone asking something.
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