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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 4)

Drill 4 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 4) 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 mixed Standard English Conventions questions on joining independent clauses, subject-verb agreement, colon use, past-perfect sequence, and introductory-clause commas.

Questions & Explanations

Text
In the years just after their discovery, fast radio bursts were easy to dismiss as mere instrument ______ these millisecond flashes rank among the most actively studied phenomena in radio astronomy.

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

  • A) glitches, today
  • B) glitches; today ✓
  • C) glitches: today
  • D) glitches today

Explanation: Both sides of the blank are complete sentences—“fast radio bursts were easy to dismiss as mere instrument glitches” and “today these millisecond flashes rank among the most actively studied phenomena”—so a semicolon joins them, as in (B). (A) puts only a comma between two complete sentences, which is a comma splice. (D) leaves no punctuation, running them together. (C)’s colon would signal that the second sentence explains or defines the first, but it only contrasts past with present, so the colon does not fit.

Text
A single archive of declassified Cold War cables, comprising thousands of individual transmissions sent across four continents, ______ historians a rare window into the daily texture of diplomatic crisis.

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

  • A) offers ✓
  • B) offer
  • C) have offered
  • D) are offering

Explanation: The subject is the singular “a single archive,” so the verb is the singular “offers” in (A). The plural nouns just before the verb—“cables,” “transmissions,” “continents”—sit inside modifying phrases and are not what does the offering. (B) “offer” agrees with those nearer plurals instead of the real subject. (C) “have offered” and (D) “are offering” are also plural, so they miss the singular “archive.”

Text
Rosalind Franklin's Photograph 51 captured what years of painstaking refinement had finally made ______ telltale cross of a helix, the regularity of its repeating units, and the symmetry of the molecule itself.

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

  • A) legible; the
  • B) legible, the
  • C) legible: the ✓
  • D) legible the

Explanation: “Captured what years of refinement had finally made legible” is a complete clause, and a colon is what introduces the list that names those features, as in (C). (A)’s semicolon needs a full sentence after it, but what follows is only a string of noun phrases. (B)’s comma runs into the commas already inside the list, so the boundary is lost. (D) leaves no punctuation, attaching the clause straight to its list.

Text
By the time marine biologists finally photographed a living giant squid in its natural habitat in 2004, the species ______ for so long only as carcasses tangled in fishing nets and as beaks recovered from the stomachs of whales that many doubted it could ever be observed alive.

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

  • A) was known
  • B) has been known
  • C) would be known
  • D) had been known ✓

Explanation: There are two past moments here: the long period when the squid was known only from remains, and the later 2004 photographs. The earlier one, finished before the other, takes the past perfect “had been known” in (D). (A) “was known” is simple past and loses that order. (B) “has been known” points to the present, not to the past moment the sentence sets. (C) “would be known” turns it into a prediction the timeline does not support.

Text
Because the grammar of a language with no surviving speakers must be reconstructed entirely from written ______ treat every reused brick and scratched potsherd as potential evidence.

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

  • A) traces, epigraphers ✓
  • B) traces; epigraphers
  • C) traces. Epigraphers
  • D) traces epigraphers

Explanation: When a sentence opens with a “Because…” clause, a comma joins it to the main clause, as in (A). (B)’s semicolon needs a complete sentence on each side, and “Because the grammar… must be reconstructed” cannot stand alone. (C)’s period leaves that opening clause as a fragment. (D) gives no punctuation, so the opening clause runs into the main one.