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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 6)

Drill 6 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 6) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Standard English Conventions. It contains 5 original questions developed by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Five hard mixed Standard English Conventions questions on paired-dash punctuation, verb forms, joining independent clauses, appositive commas, and subject-verb separation.

Questions & Explanations

Text
The surviving ledgers of the medieval wool trade—dry columns tallying fleeces, sacks, and ______ out to record the slow financial revolution that made modern banking possible.

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

  • A) shillings, turn
  • B) shillings turn
  • C) shillings: turn
  • D) shillings—turn ✓

Explanation: The interrupting phrase opens with a dash right after “wool trade,” so it has to close with a dash too, as in (D). A phrase opened with a dash cannot be closed by (A)’s comma or (C)’s colon—the marks have to match. (B) gives no closing mark, leaving the dash open and running the phrase into the verb. The commas inside “fleeces, sacks, and shillings” belong to that list and do not close the dash.

Text
The economist's 1936 treatise, ______ orthodox assumptions that had gone unquestioned for a century, redirected the entire discipline within a decade of its publication.

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

  • A) overturning ✓
  • B) it overturned
  • C) overturned
  • D) and overturned

Explanation: The main clause already has its verb, “redirected,” so the blank takes an “-ing” form that makes the inserted phrase a description of “treatise”—“overturning,” as in (A). (B) “it overturned” adds a second subject and verb, splitting the sentence into two spliced clauses. (C) “overturned” acts as a second main verb competing with “redirected,” so the sentence has two verbs and no single main one. (D) “and overturned” tries to pair with a verb that has not appeared yet.

Text
Excavators had long assumed the buried town was hastily abandoned just after the ______ discovery of a freshly laid table in one villa forced them to reconsider the timeline entirely.

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

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

Explanation: Both halves are complete sentences—“Excavators had assumed the town was abandoned” and “the discovery
 forced them to reconsider”—so a semicolon joins them, as in (B). (C) puts only a comma between them, a comma splice. (A) gives no punctuation, running them together. (D)’s colon would suggest the second clause explains or defines the first, but the discovery instead overturns that assumption, so the sentence needs the neutral break a semicolon gives between two complete clauses.

Text
Tharp's maps of the ocean floor, the product of years spent plotting sonar readings by ______ the great rift valley that runs the length of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

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

  • A) hand, revealed ✓
  • B) hand—revealed
  • C) hand revealed
  • D) hand; revealed

Explanation: “The product of years spent plotting sonar readings by hand” is an appositive opened by the comma after “floor,” so it closes with a matching comma, and “revealed” then works as the main verb for the subject “maps”—that is (A). (B)’s dash does not match the opening comma. (C) leaves no closing mark, so the appositive runs straight into the verb. (D)’s semicolon would need a full sentence after it, but “revealed the great rift valley
” has no subject of its own—it is only the verb and what it acts on.

Text
The sheer quantity of grain that the Roman state shipped from Egypt to the capital every single ______ modern logisticians, who can scarcely imagine moving so much cargo without engines, refrigeration, or paved roads.

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

  • A) year, astonishes
  • B) year; astonishes
  • C) year astonishes ✓
  • D) year: astonishes

Explanation: A subject should not be split from its verb, so the long subject “The sheer quantity of grain
 every single year” runs straight into “astonishes” with no mark, as in (C). (A)’s comma cuts the subject off from its verb. (B)’s semicolon also cuts them apart and signals a full sentence that is not there. (D)’s colon likewise separates subject from verb, and there is no list or explanation for it to lead into.