Question 87·Hard·Boundaries
One resource that many budding entrepreneurs find invaluable is the book The Lean Startup by the _____, which offers practical guidance on building sustainable companies.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For SAT punctuation/boundary questions, always read the sentence with the blank included, paying attention to commas that are already in the sentence. Identify what the underlined or missing portion is doing (for example, joining a title and a name, or linking a clause), then recall the basic rules: essential information (like a specific name needed to identify someone) is not set off by commas, and you should never create double commas or random pauses. Test each answer by reading it in context—if the commas sound or look extra, they almost always are.
Hints
Notice the comma after the blank
Look carefully at the sentence: there is already a comma right after whatever you put in the blank, just before the word "which." How does that affect your choice?
Think about the relationship between the words
The words in the blank name a person and describe what he does. Should those two parts (job title and name) be tightly connected, or separated by a comma?
Watch out for double commas
If you pick an option that ends with a comma, what will the punctuation look like when you plug it into the sentence before the existing comma?
Ask if the name is essential
Is the person’s name necessary to know which business strategist wrote The Lean Startup, or is it just extra information? Your answer to that tells you whether a comma should go between the title and the name.
Step-by-step Explanation
Read the whole sentence structure
Look at how the blank fits into the sentence:
"...the book The Lean Startup by the _____, which offers practical guidance on building sustainable companies."
Notice there is already a comma after the blank (right before "which"). That means whatever you choose must work without needing another comma after it inside the answer choice.
Identify what the blank is doing
The blank is part of a phrase that tells us who wrote the book: "by the _____".
That phrase is clearly describing a specific person who is both a business strategist and Eric Ries. So the words in the blank form one noun phrase: a job title plus a person’s name.
Recall the comma rule for titles + names
When a job title directly identifies which person we are talking about (for example, "the author J.K. Rowling," or "the scientist Marie Curie"), the title and the name are treated as essential information and are not separated by commas.
We usually write these as:
- "the author J.K. Rowling"
- "business leader Elon Musk"
not:
- "the author, J.K. Rowling" (unless the name is extra, nonessential information).
Check for extra or double commas
Because a comma is already given after the blank, any answer choice that adds a comma at the end will create a double comma in the sentence: "...Eric Ries,, which...", which is always wrong.
Also, a comma between the job title and the name would incorrectly split an essential phrase that identifies the specific person.
Match the rule to the choices and choose the correct one
Eliminate choices that:
- Put a comma between the title and the name (treating the name as nonessential), or
- Put a comma at the end of the phrase, which would create a double comma before "which".
The only option that keeps the title and name together without any extra commas is "business strategist Eric Ries", so that is the correct answer.