A punctuation question with a long list tests whether you can separate whole items without breaking words inside them. First, find each whole item by tracing the verbs or nouns that the sentence lists. Then copy the separator the list already uses: commas separate items when none contains a comma, while semicolons separate items when any contains a comma. Check any changed punctuation inside an item separately, because a mark between items has a different job from one within an item.
Hints
- Hint 1
Trace Zheng Dao’s verbs from scanning the pages to publishing the database. What are the whole tasks being listed?
- Hint 2
Look for the punctuation between the last two tasks, then check whether a task contains commas of its own.
- Hint 3
The words “a painstaking” start a description inside the first task. Check which words finish that description and which word they belong to.
Step-by-step
Trace the list and its inner punctuation
Step 1Find the three tasks
Zheng Dao scanned every page, developed custom software, and published the resulting database online for public use. What job does the blank's punctuation have to do? Since all three verbs share Zheng Dao as their subject, we're separating tasks in a list, not starting a new sentence at each verb. The first task includes the description of how painstaking the scanning was, and the software task begins after that description.
- Step 2
Copy the list's separator
How does the sentence already separate those tasks? volumes; and published puts a semicolon between developing the software and publishing the database. The first task contains its own comma in gazetteer, a painstaking, so semicolons mark the ends of whole tasks, while that comma works inside a task. Copy the existing separator after the description of the scanning work. The version ending in a comma blurs that edge, and the version with no ending mark runs one task into the next.
- Step 3
Check the description inside the item
The words a painstaking begin a description inside the scanning task, so we still have to check the punctuation within that description. Does that took five years belong with process? It finishes that noun by telling us how long the work took, and it's a that clause, a group of words beginning with that and containing a verb. A noun takes no comma before its that clause, so there's no comma after process and we choose process that took five years;. Choice B.