Question 182·Medium·Boundaries
Zaha Hadid, an architect known for her sweeping, futuristic ______ became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For punctuation and boundary questions, first find the core sentence by mentally crossing out descriptive or extra phrases; check that what remains is a complete subject–verb–object structure. Then, decide whether the middle phrase is nonessential; if so, it must be set off with matching punctuation on both sides (commas with commas, dashes with dashes). Finally, test each option by reading the whole sentence out loud in your head, watching especially for mismatched punctuation and broken subject–verb connections.
Hints
Identify the main sentence
Try reading the sentence without the middle descriptive phrase about her being an architect. Does it still form a complete sentence, and what is that core sentence?
Notice the extra information
The words starting with “an architect known for…” give extra information about Zaha Hadid. How is extra, nonessential information usually separated from the main sentence?
Match the punctuation
There is already a comma after “Zaha Hadid” before the descriptive phrase begins. What punctuation after “designs” would correctly close off that descriptive phrase and allow “became the first woman…” to follow smoothly?
Step-by-step Explanation
Find the core sentence
First, strip away the descriptive middle phrase to see the core of the sentence.
If you remove the appositive phrase “an architect known for her sweeping, futuristic designs ___”, you get:
Zaha Hadid became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
This is a complete, correct sentence. That tells you the middle part is extra information interrupting the main subject–verb pair.
Recognize the appositive (extra information)
The words “an architect known for her sweeping, futuristic designs” describe who Zaha Hadid is. This is nonessential information (the sentence is still complete without it).
Nonessential phrases like this are usually set off from the rest of the sentence with matching punctuation on both sides:
- commas
- dashes
- or parentheses (not used here)
We already have a comma after “Zaha Hadid”, which marks the start of this extra information.
Apply the matching-punctuation rule
Because the appositive starts with a comma after “Zaha Hadid,” it must also end with the same punctuation mark before the main verb “became.”
So, after the phrase “sweeping, futuristic designs,” we need punctuation that:
- closes off the extra information, and
- lets the main clause continue smoothly as “became the first woman…”.
Test each answer choice
Now check each option in the sentence:
- A) designs--and → This creates “designs--and became”, which is awkward and ungrammatical. Also, dashes must come in pairs; we already started with a comma, not a dash.
- B) designs and → This makes “known for her designs and became the first woman”, which incorrectly links “known” and “became” with “and” and breaks the sentence structure.
- D) designs → With no punctuation, we get “designs became”, which incorrectly treats “designs” as the subject of “became” instead of Zaha Hadid.
Only C) designs, correctly closes the appositive with a comma and lets the sentence continue as “became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize.” So the correct choice is “designs,”.