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SAT Writing & Language: Em-Dashes vs. Semicolons 20 Views


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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]

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]

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