Question 71·Medium·Form, Structure, and Sense
Many cities encourage residents to recycle plastic, glass, and paper rather than sending these materials to landfills; however, the city of Riverton has gone further by requiring that _____ restaurants compost organic waste.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For pronoun-usage questions like this, first identify what the pronoun is referring to (its antecedent) and whether that antecedent is singular or plural. Next, decide whether the sentence needs a possessive pronoun (showing ownership) or a subject/object pronoun. Eliminate contractions by mentally expanding them (e.g., “it's” → “it is/it has”) and seeing if the sentence still makes sense. Finally, choose the option that both matches the number of the antecedent and fits the grammatical role (possessive vs. contraction) required by the sentence.
Hints
Look at the noun after the blank
Focus on the words directly after the blank: it comes right before “restaurants.” Think about what kind of word usually comes before a noun to show who something belongs to.
Find the noun the pronoun refers to
Ask yourself: whose restaurants are being talked about? Look earlier in the sentence for a singular or plural noun that the blank must refer back to.
Check contractions vs. possessives
One choice is a contraction like “it is” or “it has.” Try replacing the blank with “it is” or “it has” and see if the sentence still makes sense.
Check singular vs. plural pronouns
“Their” is used with plural nouns (like “they”). Decide whether the noun being referred to (the thing that owns the restaurants) is singular or plural.
Step-by-step Explanation
Understand what kind of word is missing
Look at the phrase around the blank: “requiring that _____ restaurants compost organic waste.” The word in the blank directly comes before “restaurants,” so it must describe whose restaurants they are (which restaurants are being required to compost). That means we need a possessive pronoun (a pronoun that shows ownership/association).
Identify what the pronoun refers back to
Ask: whose restaurants? The sentence says, “the city of Riverton has gone further by requiring that ____ restaurants compost organic waste.” So the restaurants belong to or are associated with the city of Riverton, which is a single (singular) thing. The pronoun must therefore be singular and refer back to “city.”
Eliminate options that don’t match meaning or number
Check each choice:
- A) “it's” is a contraction meaning “it is” or “it has,” not a possessive.
- C) “their” is a plural possessive pronoun used for “they,” not for a single city.
- D) “its'” places the apostrophe after the s, which is not a standard form in English. None of these correctly give a singular possessive pronoun for “city.”
Confirm the remaining option
The only remaining option is B) “its,” which is the standard singular possessive form that can modify a noun: “the city of Riverton has gone further by requiring that its restaurants compost organic waste.” This is grammatically correct and matches the meaning of the sentence, so the correct answer is B) its.