Whenever Jonah had a free 3 moment—he was studying.3.
A) NO CHANGE
B) moment; he
C) moment, he,
D) moment, heHere’s How to Crack It
The punctuation is changing in the answer choices, and there’s some STOP punctuation, so let’s use the
Vertical Line Test. Put the line between moment and he. The first idea, Whenever Jonah had a free
moment, is incomplete, and the second idea, he was studying, is complete. Therefore, we can’t use STOP
(which needs two complete ideas) or HALF-STOP (which needs a complete idea before the punctuation),
thus eliminating (A) and (B). Then, because there is no good reason to put a comma after the word he, the
correct answer must be (D).
A SLIGHT PAUSE FOR COMMAS
Commas can be a little tricky. In question 3, we got down to two answer choices, (C) and (D), after
having completed the Vertical Line Test. But then how do you decide whether to keep a comma in or not?
It seems a little arbitrary to say that you use a comma “every time you want to pause,” so let’s reverse that
and make it a little more concrete.
If you can’t cite a reason to use a comma, don’t use one.On the SAT, there are only four reasons to use a comma:- in STOP punctuation, with one of the FANBOYS
- in GO punctuation, to separate incomplete ideas from other ideas
- in a list of three or more things
- in a sentence containing unnecessary information
We’ve already seen the first two concepts, so let’s look at the other two.
Try this one.
His top-choice schools were 4 Harvard, Yale and Princeton.