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ACT English 2.1 Style 245 Views


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Description:

ACT English: Style Drill 2, Problem 1. What's the best way to make this sentence more concise?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by redundancy. By redundancy. By redundancy...

00:09

How would you correct the underlined portion below, if at all?

00:11

My older brother, who is a sibling of mine, is studying to become a veterinarian.?

00:24

The original sentence seems to be suffering from a serious lack of style.

00:28

Because the word "sibling" means someone's brother or sister, we already know that the

00:32

speaker's brother is his or her sibling.

00:34

So...choice (A) is guilty

00:35

of redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.

00:37

Choice (B) may be less wordy than (A), but it's equally as redundant.

00:41

We don't need to be told that this person's brother is also his or her sibling.

00:45

Choice C? This one is guilty of the same redundancy

00:48

as both of the other two.

00:49

It does give us the added information that the speaker has more than one sibling...

00:53

...but that fact doesn't seem particularly relevant to the rest of the sentence.

00:56

It turns out that the only way to avoid redundancy is to cut the entire underlined portion out

01:00

of the original sentence.

01:01

Therefore, (D) is the correct answer.

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