A verb tense question tests whether you can tell when something happens from the text. Check that each form agrees with the subject, then find the time clue. With several dates, ask which one sets the blank's time. The present describes now, the simple past describes finished events, will looks ahead, has connects earlier events to now, and had places them before a past point. Every tense needs a clue, so rule out forms whose timing the text doesn't support.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look through the whole sentence for the two time references. Which one tells you when the guide first appeared, and which one belongs to the reprinting?
- Hint 2
Work out what by tells you about the reprints. How does that word place the reprinting in relation to the early 2000s?
Step-by-step
Follow the time clue
Step 1Find the date for the reprinting
The subject it stands for one field guide, and every choice agrees with it, so the time decides. Which date belongs to the reprinting? The clue by the early 2000s belongs to the blank, while 1998 tells us when the guide was first published.
- Step 2
Put the events in order
What does by the early 2000s tell us about the reprints? By sets a limit: when that period arrived, several reprints were already complete. The date isn't the start of the reprinting; it's the point from which we're looking back at it. Because that point is itself in the past, we have reprints completed before a later past point.
- Step 3
Use the tense for the earlier reprinting
Something already done by a later past point takes the past perfect, a tense that uses had to look back from that point. In it ______ several times, had been reprinted gives that tense and says what had happened to the guide by then. Choice B.