Question 31·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas
Textual scholars often compare successive drafts to reconstruct a poet's intended final wording. Laila Serrano argues, however, that revision need not form a straight path toward a fixed destination. In surviving notebooks, poets sometimes restore discarded phrases, transfer lines from abandoned poems, or produce several clean copies that differ but carry no dates. These practices do not make compositional history unknowable: paper, ink, and cross-references may establish local sequences. Yet a single family tree of drafts can mislead by converting unresolved relationships into orderly progression. Serrano therefore favors diagrams that mark both secure connections and open branches. This approach does not imply that an editor cannot prefer one version for publication; rather, selecting a text and describing how it came into being are separate tasks.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
For a main-idea question, identify the author's central claim and then track any qualifications that limit it. Favor the option that captures the passage's full argument—including important contrasts and distinctions—without turning a limited observation into an absolute claim.
Hints
Track the contrast
Notice what Serrano rejects about a single family-tree model and what she proposes instead.
Consider the qualification
Pay attention to the sentence explaining what paper, ink, and cross-references can sometimes establish.
Use the conclusion
Ask why the final sentence separates two tasks that editors perform.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify Serrano's central claim
Serrano challenges the assumption that drafts always form a straightforward sequence leading toward one final text.
Account for the qualification
The text does not claim that the order of drafts is entirely unknowable. Physical evidence and cross-references can establish some relationships, but other relationships may remain uncertain.
Include the concluding distinction
Serrano supports models that display both certainty and uncertainty, while distinguishing those models from an editor's decision about which version to publish. Only choice D includes both parts of this main idea.