A punctuation question about a title and a name tests whether the name is essential or extra information. Read the words before the title: do they tell you who the person is, or do you need the name to know? Test the sentence without the name: use no commas if the name is needed and a pair if it is extra information. Then check the subject and verb, since a single comma can't separate them.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look at the wording right before the blank. What does seasoned tell you, and does that wording already say who the person is?
- Hint 2
Try crossing out the writer's name. Read the words left between “Critics have remarked that” and “presents” and ask whether they can stand as written.
Step-by-step
Ask whether the name says which person
Step 1Find the name being tested
Read seasoned _____ presents together. Which words would the commas set off? All the choices put Walter Isaacson after the title science journalist, and their only difference is the commas around that name. A name is essential when it says which person; it's extra when the wording before it has already told us who that person is.
- Step 2
Test whether the title can stand alone
Does the wording before the name already tell us who the person is? seasoned tells us about experience, not which journalist is meant, and nothing before science journalist picks out one particular person. Try crossing out the name: seasoned science journalist presents can't stand as written because the title for one person has no a or the to let it stand on its own. The name is essential and takes no commas, so the version with commas around the name wrongly treats needed words as extra information.
- Step 3
Check each remaining comma
A single comma must have a job, so let's check where each lone-comma version puts it. The version with only a comma before the name opens a pair that never closes. The version with only a comma after the name separates the writer's title and name from presents, the verb that tells us what he does. The version with no commas lets the writer's title and name lead straight into his verb. Choice A.