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ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?
ACT English 3.4 Grammar and Usage 416 Views
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ACT English: Grammar and Usage Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice uses the correct tenses for this sentence?
Transcript
- 00:03
Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by movie theatres. We know you really want
- 00:07
to get some Junior Mints, but we're running late, so you might have to make some concessions.
- 00:14
How would you correct the following sentence, if it needs correcting at all?
- 00:17
Before we had left for the movie theater, we had eaten dinner.
- 00:26
The past perfect tense, or the super past tense, is used to compare two events that
Full Transcript
- 00:31
started and ended in the past.
- 00:34
So we're looking for an answer choice that uses "had" in front of one past participle
- 00:38
and not the other, to show that one event occurred before the other one.
- 00:43
(A) isn't correct, because the original sentence goes overboard with the "hads."
- 00:47
Take it easy, (A). The Buddha says that moderation is the key to non-suffering.
- 00:52
Choice (B) puts both parts of the sentence in the past tense.
- 00:55
Since we're looking for one of these to be in the past perfect tense, however, we can
- 00:59
take it out of the running.
- 01:01
While the last choice had too many "hads," this one has none at all.
- 01:05
Well, (C) does have only one "had," but it comes in the wrong place.
- 01:10
In this sentence, eating dinner comes before leaving for the movie theater, so we need
- 01:14
the "had" to be connected with "eaten" rather than "left."
- 01:17
Choice (D) delivers exactly what we were talking about, making it the correct answer.
- 01:21
When we eat before going to the movies, we always save room for popcorn.
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ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?
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