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Boundaries SAT question

Reading and Writing · Standard English Conventions · Easy · Answer it here, explanation included.

Robin Wall Kimmerer of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is a bryologist, a plant scientist who specializes in mosses. To Kimmerer, mosses are Earth’s most adaptable plants: they can clone blank enter a dormant state in times of drought, and grow in areas that don’t have soil.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

ExplanationShow

Choice B is the best answer. The convention being tested is the punctuation of items in a series. The comma after “themselves” is used conventionally to separate the first item (“they can clone themselves”) and the second item (“enter a dormant state in times of drought”) in the series of things mosses can do. 

Choice A is incorrect because a semicolon can’t be used in this way to separate items in a simple series such as this. Choice C is incorrect because it results in a rhetorically unacceptable sentence fragment beginning with “And enter.” Choice D is incorrect because it fails to use appropriate punctuation to separate the first and second items in the series.

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