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Question

Difficulty: MediumSemicolons

The sentence below has a missing punctuation mark. Which punctuation mark must be placed in the blank to correctly join the two independent clauses?

Answer:Translating the ancient parchment required years of painstaking research【;】 nevertheless, the linguistic team finally decoded the forgotten dialect.

Answer

A semicolon (;) must be used to join the two independent clauses.
A semicolon is required to connect two independent clauses when the second clause is introduced by a conjunctive adverb (such as 'nevertheless', 'however', or 'therefore').

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the clauses surrounding the blank.
The first clause is 'Translating the ancient parchment required years of painstaking research' and the second is 'nevertheless, the linguistic team finally decoded the forgotten dialect.' Both are independent clauses because they can stand alone as complete sentences.
Analyzing the grammatical structure of the clauses is the first step to determining proper punctuation.
2
Identify the transition word following the blank.
The transition word is 'nevertheless', which is a conjunctive adverb.
Conjunctive adverbs that link two independent clauses must be preceded by a semicolon and followed by a comma.

Key Concept

Semicolons are used to link two independent clauses, especially when the second clause begins with a conjunctive adverb or transitional phrase.
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Topics

Semicolons

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