Question 17·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas

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For decades, historians treated an unusual sentence shared by an anonymous May 1846 newspaper editorial and an entry labeled “February 1846” in botanist Nia Voss's diary as evidence that the editorial's author had seen Voss's private writing. A conservator later determined, however, that the diary was assembled in 1851 from handwritten copies of Voss's loose field sheets. Moreover, the paper containing the copied February entry was not manufactured until August 1846. That entry repeats a misspelled plant name printed in the May editorial but found nowhere in Voss's surviving field materials; an authentic February field sheet records the same botanical observation but contains neither the unusual sentence nor the misspelling. Together, these findings suggest that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

For an inference question involving historical documents, separate the date of an event or idea from the date of the physical text that records it. Then identify distinctive evidence—such as an unusual phrase or shared error—that indicates which source likely influenced the other, and choose the option that remains cautious while accounting for all the evidence.

Hints

Hint 1
Distinguish two dates
Consider the difference between when Voss made the botanical observation and when the diary entry itself was copied.
Hint 2
Compare the documents
Identify which documents contain the unusual sentence and misspelling and which document lacks both.
Hint 3
Consider the error as evidence
When one later document reproduces a distinctive error from an earlier document, that error can indicate how wording moved between the sources.

Step-by-step

Step 1
Separate the observation from the diary entry
The authentic field sheet confirms that Voss recorded the botanical observation in February. However, the diary entry containing the unusual sentence was a later copy, not the original record.
Step 2
Trace the distinctive wording
The copied entry was written on paper manufactured after the May editorial and reproduces a misspelling found in that editorial but absent from Voss's original materials. The February label therefore does not establish that the entry's exact wording existed in February.
Step 3
Draw the best-supported inference
The correct answer is the diary's copied February entry probably incorporated language from the May editorial rather than supplying language to it.

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SAT Reading: Information and IdeasAdvancedCoreSAT inference questions: complete the text logically

Question 17·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas

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