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Difficulty: EasyCommas with Lists, Clauses, and Coordinate Adjectives

The archaeologist discovered a hidden chamber inside the ancient temple, she carefully photographed the artifacts.

Which choice is the best version of the underlined portion?

  1. A
    NO CHANGE
  2. temple and carefully photographedAnswer
  3. C
    temple; carefully photographed
  4. D
    temple, and carefully photographed

Answer

The correct option is 'temple and carefully photographed', which removes the comma splice by creating a compound predicate with no unnecessary punctuation.
The correct choice, 'temple and carefully photographed', correctly joins the two actions performed by the single subject, 'the archaeologist', into a compound predicate. Since these two verbs share the same subject, no comma is required before the coordinating conjunction 'and'.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the original sentence structure to identify the punctuation issue.
The clause before the comma ('The archaeologist discovered a hidden chamber inside the ancient temple') is independent. The clause after the comma ('she carefully photographed the artifacts') is also independent. Joining them with only a comma is a comma splice error.
Identifying the error helps determine what corrections are needed.
2
Evaluate the option 'temple and carefully photographed'.
This option eliminates the second subject pronoun 'she', leaving a single subject ('The archaeologist') and a compound predicate ('discovered... and photographed...').
A compound predicate joined by a coordinating conjunction does not require any punctuation between the verbs.
3
Verify other choices for grammatical correctness.
The option using a semicolon creates a fragment because what follows the semicolon is not an independent clause. The option with a comma and 'and' incorrectly places a comma between the elements of a compound predicate.
Ensures all distractors are grammatically incorrect.

Key Concept

Avoiding comma splices and punctuation errors in compound predicates
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Topics

Commas with Lists, Clauses, and Coordinate Adjectives

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