ABLE Writing Skills 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which sentence correctly uses a semicolon?
- She studied hard; and she passed the exam.
- She studied hard; she passed the exam. (Correct answer)
- She studied; hard and passed the exam.
- She; studied hard and passed the exam.
Correct answer: She studied hard; she passed the exam.
A semicolon joins two closely related independent clauses without a coordinating conjunction.
Question 2: Which option corrects the subject-verb agreement error: 'Neither the students nor the teacher are ready'?
- Neither the students nor the teacher were ready.
- Neither the students nor the teacher is ready. (Correct answer)
- Neither the students nor the teacher am ready.
- The sentence is already correct.
Correct answer: Neither the students nor the teacher is ready.
With 'neither/nor,' the verb agrees with the subject closest to it; 'teacher' is singular, so use 'is.'
Question 3: Which sentence avoids wordiness?
- Due to the fact that it was raining, we stayed inside.
- Because it was raining, we stayed inside. (Correct answer)
- On account of the fact that rain was occurring, we stayed inside.
- Owing to the situation of it raining, inside is where we stayed.
Correct answer: Because it was raining, we stayed inside.
'Because' is a concise substitute for the wordy phrase 'due to the fact that.'
Question 4: A paragraph's topic sentence should:
- Provide evidence and examples only
- Conclude the paragraph's argument
- State the main idea of the paragraph (Correct answer)
- List supporting details in order
Correct answer: State the main idea of the paragraph
The topic sentence introduces and controls the central idea of the paragraph.
Question 5: Which punctuation correctly ends an indirect question?
- ?
- !
- . (Correct answer)
- ;
Correct answer: .
Indirect questions are statements reporting a question and end with a period, not a question mark.
Question 6: Which revision eliminates the redundancy: 'The unexpected surprise caught everyone off guard'?
- The unexpected event caught everyone off guard.
- The surprise caught everyone off guard. (Correct answer)
- The surprise was unexpected and caught everyone.
- Everyone was off guard from the unexpected surprise.
Correct answer: The surprise caught everyone off guard.
'Surprise' already implies something unexpected, so 'unexpected' is redundant.
Question 7: Which choice best describes parallel structure in writing?
- Using the same grammatical form for items in a list or series (Correct answer)
- Alternating sentence lengths for variety
- Repeating the same word at the start of each paragraph
- Placing the most important idea last in every sentence
Correct answer: Using the same grammatical form for items in a list or series
Parallel structure requires that coordinated elements share the same grammatical form (e.g., all nouns or all gerunds).
ABLE Writing Skills 3
Which sentence correctly uses a semicolon?