A punctuation question with a list tests how you introduce the list and separate its items. First, find the job of each mark by finding the start of the list and the end of each item. A colon needs a full sentence before it and a list or explanation after it. Then read each item through: an opening when part takes a comma before the full sentence that follows. Semicolons separate items that contain commas; otherwise, commas separate them.
Hints
- Hint 1
Complete Chen’s opening with the noun shared by the choices, then test whether those words can stand alone.
- Hint 2
Look for where each whole pattern begins and ends. What situation and result belong together in each one?
- Hint 3
Read past each opening when part to the words that tell what happened. Could the when part stand alone without those words?
Step-by-step
Test the introduction, then the items
Step 1Test what comes before the list
Cover everything after patterns, which completes literary historian Amara Chen summarized three, and test the mark that introduces the list. Can the opening stand alone? Yes: Chen is the subject, and summarized tells what she did. The phrase about comparing records leads into that full sentence. What follows describes the three patterns, so a colon can introduce this list.
- Step 2
Build each complete pattern
How should we group the three patterns? Each item includes a situation and its result: censorship grew stronger and courtesies increased; inspections eased and courtesies nearly disappeared; actors were arrested and courtesies stopped. In when inspections eased, when leaves us waiting to hear what happened, so those words can’t stand alone. They need a comma before they nearly disappeared, the full sentence that finishes the item. Semicolons separate the whole items because the items contain commas, and the semicolon before and when actors were arrested shows the mark to use between the other items.
- Step 3
Separate items without splitting them
Now test the punctuation against Chen’s three whole patterns. The version with when inspections eased; they nearly disappeared splits the second item, while the version with when censorship intensified; splits all three opening parts from their results. The version beginning patterns, fails earlier, because a comma alone can’t join Chen’s opening full sentence to the full sentence about coded courtesies. Only the colon version with when inspections eased, they nearly disappeared uses commas within all the items and semicolons between them. Choice C.