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Question

Difficulty: MediumCommas with Lists, Clauses, and Coordinate Adjectives

During their expedition through the Sonoran Desert, botanists documented several rare, heat-resistant cacti, gathered soil samples, and mapped the local flora. Which of the following options provides the grammatically correct punctuation for the underlined portion?

  1. NO CHANGEAnswer
  2. B
    rare, heat-resistant cacti; gathered soil samples, and mapped
  3. C
    rare, heat-resistant cacti, gathered soil samples, and mapping
  4. D
    rare, heat-resistant cacti, while gathering soil samples, and mapped

Answer

The original phrasing 'rare, heat-resistant cacti, gathered soil samples, and mapped' is correct because it properly punctuates coordinate adjectives with a comma and maintains parallel past-tense verb structures across all three list items.
The original sentence correctly separates the two coordinate adjectives ('rare' and 'heat-resistant') with a comma and uses serial commas to coordinate the three parallel verbs in the predicate ('documented', 'gathered', and 'mapped').

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze coordinate adjectives
The adjectives 'rare' and 'heat-resistant' both modify 'cacti' independently (e.g., 'rare and heat-resistant cacti' makes sense), so a comma is required between them.
Coordinate adjectives modifying the same noun must be separated by a comma.
2
Evaluate list structure and parallelism
The sentence presents three parallel predicate verbs performed by the botanists: 'documented...', 'gathered...', and 'mapped...'.
All items in a series must maintain consistent grammatical structure.
3
Verify list punctuation
Commas are correctly placed after the first item ('cacti,') and second item ('samples,') before the coordinating conjunction 'and'.
Standard punctuation requires commas to separate items in a series of three or more elements.

Key Concept

Commas with Lists and Coordinate Adjectives
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Topics

Commas with Lists, Clauses, and Coordinate Adjectives

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