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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 26)

Drill 26 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 26) 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.

Five hard SAT Standard English Conventions items covering single dash with a summarizing clause, restrictive versus nonrestrictive relative clauses with "which" and "that," subject-verb agreement in an inverted construction, misplaced "almost," and parallel structure in a correlative pair.

Questions & Explanations

Text
Period, maximum brightness, and ______ three quantities figured prominently in Leavitt's 1912 tabulation of the twenty-five Cepheid variable stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, work that later let Edwin Hubble gauge cosmic distances for the first time.

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

  • A) minimum brightness, these
  • B) minimum brightness: these
  • C) minimum brightness — these ✓
  • D) minimum brightness; these

Explanation: The structure is a fronted noun list (Period, maximum brightness, and minimum brightness), followed by a clause that names what those three things did together. The dash in (C) correctly connects the list to its summarizing clause when the list itself is not a complete sentence. (A) sets a comma there, but a comma cannot bridge a noun phrase to a full clause this way. (B) uses a colon, which requires a complete sentence on its left side; only the list sits there. (D) uses a semicolon, which has the same requirement on both sides and fails for the same reason.

Text
Built between 1859 and 1869 by an international engineering consortium, ______ opened to ship traffic in 1869 and dramatically shortened the route between Europe and Asia.

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

  • A) the Suez Canal, which links the Mediterranean and Red Seas, ✓
  • B) the Suez Canal which links the Mediterranean and Red Seas
  • C) the Suez Canal, that links the Mediterranean and Red Seas, according to the passage's account
  • D) the Suez Canal that links the Mediterranean and Red Seas

Explanation: There is only one Suez Canal, so a relative clause about it adds extra information rather than picking it out of a larger set. That makes the clause nonrestrictive, and a pair of commas with "which" is the standard form, supplied by (A). (B) drops the commas, treating the clause as restrictive, as if there were several Suez Canals and the clause specified which one. (C) keeps the commas but uses "that," and "that" pairs with restrictive clauses without commas, not with comma-set nonrestrictive ones. (D) again uses the restrictive form with "that" and no commas, implying a set of canals to choose among.

Text
In the compound eyes of some mantis shrimp ______ twelve color-sensitive photoreceptor classes, far more than the three cone types used in typical human color vision, an arrangement that lets the animal process color in an unusual way.

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

  • A) sits
  • B) is
  • C) was
  • D) are ✓

Explanation: This is an inverted sentence: a locative phrase comes first, then the verb, then the subject. The agreement target is the real subject "twelve color-sensitive photoreceptor classes," which is plural, so the verb has to be plural too. (D) "are" agrees. (A) "sits" is singular, and the singular noun "mantis shrimp" closest to the blank is a decoy, not the subject. (B) "is" is also singular and falls into the same trap. (C) "was" is singular and shifts the sentence into the past, neither of which fits.

Text
Through geochemical analysis, researchers ______ of Stonehenge's surviving large sarsen stones to West Woods near Marlborough, a finding that reshaped theories about the monument's construction.

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

  • A) have almost traced all
  • B) have traced almost all ✓
  • C) almost have traced all
  • D) have traced all almost

Explanation: The sentence's hedge is on the quantity, not the action: nearly every sarsen has been matched, even if not every single one. The limiter "almost" therefore belongs right before "all," and (B) puts it there. (A) shifts "almost" in front of "traced," so it modifies the verb: the action is almost complete, but might not have happened to any stone yet. (C) drops "almost" in front of the auxiliary "have," reading as if the tracing were on the verge of happening rather than as a near-finished count. (D) places "almost" after "all," a position English does not allow for this limiter.

Text
Mansa Musa's 1324 pilgrimage from Mali to Mecca gained renown ______, and Egyptian chroniclers reported depressed gold prices in Cairo for years after his caravan passed through.

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

  • A) not only for the scale of his entourage but also for the lavish gold he distributed ✓
  • B) not only for the scale of his entourage and also for the lavish gold he distributed
  • C) not only because of the scale of his entourage but also for the lavish gold he distributed
  • D) not only for the scale of his entourage but the lavish gold he distributed

Explanation: The correlative pair "not only X but also Y" demands that X and Y have the same grammatical shape. In (A), both halves are prepositional phrases that start with "for" ("for the scale of his entourage" and "for the lavish gold he distributed"), a clean parallel. (B) replaces "but also" with "and also," breaking the correlative pairing English requires here. (C) opens with "because of" but closes with "for," mixing two different prepositions across the two halves. (D) drops "also" from the second half and shortens its phrasing, so the two halves no longer line up.