ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Items in a series Videos 1 videos
Cars and dashes. Yes, we're talking dashes not dashboards in this SAT Writing video.
SAT Writing & Language: Em-Dashes vs. Semicolons 20 Views
Share It!
Description:
Cars and dashes. Yes, we're talking dashes not dashboards in this SAT Writing video.
Transcript
- 00:03
okay next one down question 3 of 11 in
- 00:06
the writing exercise here and we're
- 00:08
focused on the phrase cars and lighter
- 00:10
more see right there where it's
- 00:12
underlined [man talking fast]
Full Transcript
- 00:22
how do we analyze this one well let's
- 00:23
see it's all about the - and that -
- 00:26
looks just jargony and kind of wrong
- 00:28
like it's a really rare that you would
- 00:30
have a - there so follow the pattern of
- 00:32
punctuation already established in this
- 00:35
sentence there should be a semicolon
- 00:37
after car seats everywhere else [arrows point to semicolon]
- 00:39
however the comma between lighter and
- 00:41
more is just what we need because it's
- 00:44
separating coordinate adjectives like
- 00:46
that's what you do if you're in the
- 00:48
comma Union you separate the coordinate
- 00:50
the adjectives there M dashes can be
- 00:53
tricky when used at the end of a
- 00:54
sentence they emphasize whatever comes
- 00:56
next in this case each item in the list
- 00:58
is of equal value it's kind of like a
- 01:01
car socialism so there's no reason that
- 01:03
lighter more efficient industrial
- 01:05
equipment should get special treatment
- 01:08
yeah get rid of that a and because [car going through tunnel fast]
- 01:10
there's a comma within one of the lists
- 01:12
items while all the punctuation goes up
- 01:14
a notch and what would normally be just
- 01:16
a comma gets upgraded to a semicolon so
- 01:18
I'll get rid of B not all commas change
- 01:20
to semicolons however see that's how it
- 01:23
works alright we're done [Answer D circled green]
Related Videos
What do austronauts and Michael Jackson have in common? Watch this video on sentence structure to find out!
Learn about effective language use from austronauts that like hoarding moon rocks in this SAT writing drill!
What's the whole essay about? How does time control or matter to the essay as a whole?
Its...or is it it's? Watch this SAT drill to help unravel that age old question.
This SAT Writing videos goes over when to keep or ditch an extra sentence.