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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 17)

Drill 17 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 17) 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 nonrestrictive clauses set off by a pair of commas, parallel structure in a series, semicolons separating list items that contain their own commas, finite versus nonfinite verb forms, and separate possessives for two owners.

Questions & Explanations

Text
Stradivari's ______ have long been prized for their tone, even as modern makers continue to study their design and materials.

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

  • A) violins, which were made in Cremona three centuries ago
  • B) violins which were made in Cremona three centuries ago
  • C) violins, which were made in Cremona three centuries ago, ✓
  • D) violins—which were made in Cremona three centuries ago, as described in the passage

Explanation: The clause "which were made in Cremona three centuries ago" adds background, but the sentence already identifies exactly which violins it means, so the clause is extra information and takes a comma on both sides: (C). (A) opens with a comma but never closes the pair, so the clause runs straight into "have long been prized." (B) uses no commas at all, which would signal that the clause is needed to pick out which violins, when it isn't. (D) opens with a dash and closes with a comma, but a pair around an interruption has to use the same mark at both ends.

Text
The ancient Olympic festival filled its days with running, wrestling, boxing, and ______, all performed before crowds who had traveled from across the Greek world.

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

  • A) racing chariots ✓
  • B) chariots raced
  • C) to race chariots
  • D) they raced chariots

Explanation: Items in a series have to share one grammatical form, and the first three are -ing words acting as nouns: "running, wrestling, boxing." The fourth item needs that same gerund form, which (A) "racing chariots" supplies. (B) "chariots raced" is a noun followed by a verb, not a gerund, so it falls out of the pattern. (C) "to race chariots" is an infinitive, a different form again. (D) "they raced chariots" is a full clause, which cannot sit in a list beside single -ing words.

Text
Bletchley Park's wartime staff came from strikingly different worlds: Alan Turing, a Cambridge ______ Dilly Knox, a veteran codebreaker from the previous war; and several skilled crossword solvers recruited after a newspaper puzzle competition.

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

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

Explanation: When the items in a list already contain their own commas, you separate the items with semicolons so the reader can see where one ends and the next begins. Each member here comes with a comma and a description, and the printed "; and several skilled crossword solvers" near the end shows the list is already running on semicolons, so (D) matches it. (A) adds one more comma to a list full of them, blurring the divisions. (B) uses "and," which tries to close the list between its first and second members. (C) a colon does not separate items inside a series.

Text
Cooling a thread of mercury to within a few degrees of absolute zero, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes ______ in 1911 that its electrical resistance had vanished completely.

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

  • A) discovering
  • B) discovered ✓
  • C) to discover
  • D) having discovered

Explanation: Strip away the opening phrase "Cooling a thread of mercury ...," and the sentence still needs a main verb for its subject, "Heike Kamerlingh Onnes." Only a finite verb can fill that slot, so (B) "discovered" is right. (A) "discovering" is a participle, which leaves the sentence with no working verb and turns it into a fragment. (C) "to discover" is an infinitive, the same problem. (D) "having discovered" is another participle form, so it also fails to give the subject a verb.

Text
Although the two pioneers of pointillism shared a technique, ______ canvases are easy to tell apart: one planned every dot in advance, while the other let his colors fall more loosely.

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

  • A) Seurat and Signac's
  • B) Seurats' and Signacs'
  • C) Seurat's and Signacs'
  • D) Seurat's and Signac's ✓

Explanation: The sentence says the two painters' canvases can be told apart, so each man has his own body of work, and separate ownership puts an apostrophe-s on both names: (D) "Seurat's and Signac's." (A) "Seurat and Signac's" marks only the second name, which signals one shared set of canvases, the opposite of what the sentence describes. (B) "Seurats' and Signacs'" makes both names plural possessives, as if there were several people named Seurat and Signac. (C) mixes the two, giving one singular possessive and one plural possessive.