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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 14)

Drill 14 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 14) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Standard English Conventions. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

These five questions cover paired commas around an interrupting phrase, the colon before a list, subject-verb agreement across intervening nouns, plural possessive apostrophes, and the comma after an introductory clause.

Questions & Explanations

Text
The flying ______ an external support that carries the outward thrust of a vault down to the ground, let medieval masons open walls to enormous windows.

Question 1. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) buttress—
  • B) buttress:
  • C) buttress, ✓
  • D) buttress;

Explanation: The phrase "an external support that carries the outward thrust of a vault down to the ground" renames the buttress and interrupts the sentence, so it sits inside a matched pair of commas; the closing comma after "ground" is already printed, so the opening mark is a comma too (C). (A) a dash would need a dash to close it, not a comma. (B) a colon can't fence an interrupter, and "The flying buttress" is not a complete clause before it. (D) a semicolon needs a full sentence on each side.

Text
The Beaufort scale rates wind by what observers can ______ smoke drift at force one, whitecaps at force four, and uprooted trees at force ten.

Question 2. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) see: ✓
  • B) see,
  • C) see;
  • D) see and

Explanation: Everything before the blank is a complete clause, and the examples that follow spell out what observers see, so a colon introduces them (A). (B) a comma can't set up a list this way after a full clause. (C) a semicolon needs a full sentence after it, not a string of examples. (D) "and" just tacks one more item onto the clause and blurs the list structure.

Text
Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of mending broken ceramics with gold-dusted lacquer, ______ each crack into part of the object's history rather than a flaw to hide.

Question 3. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) turn
  • B) have turned
  • C) turns ✓
  • D) are turning

Explanation: Strip out the modifiers and the subject is just "Kintsugi," which is singular, so the verb is the singular "turns" (C). (A) "turn" is pulled toward the plural "ceramics" inside the modifier rather than the singular subject. (B) "have turned" and (D) "are turning" both use plural verb forms that don't match a singular subject.

Text
Fibonacci's 1202 book showed that Hindu-Arabic numerals could simplify both ______ daily calculations.

Question 4. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) merchant's and money changer's
  • B) merchants and money changers
  • C) merchants' and money changer's
  • D) merchants' and money changers' ✓

Explanation: Merchants and money changers are two separate plural groups, and each owns its own calculations, so both words are plural possessives: "merchants' and money changers'" (D). (A) uses singular possessives, but each names a whole group. (B) drops the apostrophes the possession needs. (C) leaves "money changer's" singular while making "merchants'" plural.

Text
Because no single butterfly lives long enough to complete the round ______ monarchs that reach Mexico are three or four generations removed from those that left it.

Question 5. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) trip; the
  • B) trip, the ✓
  • C) trip. The
  • D) trip the

Explanation: "Because no single butterfly lives long enough to complete the round trip" is a dependent clause, so it joins the main clause with a comma (B). (A) a semicolon can't follow a dependent clause. (C) a period cuts the "Because" clause off as a fragment. (D) running the two parts together with no mark leaves the sentence fused.