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Question

Difficulty: EasySentence Fragments

During the autumn months, millions of monarch butterflies travel southward from Canada and the United States to their wintering grounds in Mexico. Because they must seek warmer climates to survive the cold winter. As they migrate, they rely on milkweed plants along their path for nourishment.

Which of the following choices represents the best replacement for the underlined portion of the sentence?

  1. A
    Mexico. Because they must seek warmer climates to survive
  2. B
    Mexico; because they must seek warmer climates to survive
  3. C
    Mexico, they must seek warmer climates to survive
  4. Mexico because they must seek warmer climates to surviveAnswer

Answer

The option that removes the punctuation entirely and joins the dependent clause to the preceding independent clause is correct.
The correct option removes the period between the clauses, allowing the dependent clause starting with 'because' to be correctly integrated into the main sentence. This resolves the sentence fragment and creates a grammatically sound structure.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the grammatical structure of the underlined clause starting with 'Because'.
The clause 'Because they must seek warmer climates to survive the cold winter' is a dependent clause due to the subordinating conjunction 'Because'.
Determining whether a clause is independent or dependent helps check if it can stand alone as a sentence.
2
Analyze how the dependent clause connects to the preceding sentence.
The preceding sentence ends with 'Mexico', which concludes a complete independent clause. A period cannot separate an independent clause from a following dependent clause.
This step reveals that a sentence fragment error is present in the original sentence.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the correct correction that avoids fragments and comma splices.
Removing the period and joining the clauses with 'because' creates a single correct sentence, while other choices introduce semicolons before dependent clauses or create comma splices.
This step identifies the grammatically correct choice that resolves the fragment without introducing new punctuation errors.

Key Concept

Sentence Fragments
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Topics

Sentence Fragments

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