Question 149·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Standard English Conventions
Recovered from a sealed storeroom beneath a coastal theater, a collection of costume sketches that archivists had long assumed was lost ______ how nineteenth-century touring companies altered fashionable garments for smaller stages provides historians with unusually detailed evidence of backstage decision-making.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
For sentences with long modifiers, locate the core subject and its main verb before evaluating the blank. If a later verb already completes the sentence, the blank may require a participle rather than another finite verb. Remove intervening phrases temporarily to make the underlying structure easier to see.
Hints
Find the sentence's core
Temporarily remove the descriptive material and identify what the collection does for historians.
Count the main verbs
Decide whether the sentence already has a finite verb that agrees with the singular subject “a collection.”
Examine the blank's role
The words beginning at the blank should describe the collection rather than create a second main predicate.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the subject and main verb
The subject is the singular noun phrase “a collection of costume sketches.” Later, “provides” functions as its main verb: the collection “provides historians” with evidence.
Determine the blank's function
Because “provides” is already the main verb, the blank should not introduce another finite verb. Instead, it should begin a modifying phrase that describes what the collection does.
Choose the participle
“Revealing” is a participle, so “revealing how nineteenth-century touring companies altered fashionable garments” correctly modifies “a collection of costume sketches” without competing with the main verb “provides.”