ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by condensed water. It's a lot tastier than condensed milk.

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Check out the following passage...

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How would you correct this underlined segment from the passage, if at all?

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condensate—moisture

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And here are the potential answers...

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This question asks us to identify the punctuation required to link the main clause to the phrase

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that tags along at the end of the sentence.

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Somehow or another, we have to find a way to attach...

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"Most of the water seen in the funnel of a waterspout is actually condensate"...

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to...

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"moisture in the air resulting from the condensation of water vapor"...

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without breaking any of the holy laws of grammar.

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Choice (D) suggests that we not use any punctuation whatsoever.

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This is a mistake, though. We definitely need some kind of punctuation to separate the phrase

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from the main clause.

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Without punctuation, it becomes nearly impossible to understand that the phrase is helping to

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define condensate.

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And we know that everybody out there is dying to know what that is so...

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(B) is wrong because it uses a semicolon incorrectly.

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Semicolons are mainly used to link two independent clauses, meaning clauses that can stand on

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their own as complete sentences.

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Though the main clause is independent, the phrase that follows doesn't have its own verb,

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so it's totally dependent on the main clause for its existence.

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Which must be kinda stressful for the main clause.

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(C) is incorrect for a similar reason. By putting a period between the clause and the

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phrase, (C) is declaring that the phrase is ready to stand as an independent clause.

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Unfortunately, this is not the case.

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Without a verb, the phrase just isn't ready to face the world alone.

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The correct answer is (A). Though a comma would also work here, it's totally OK to use a dash.

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Dashes are useful when a writer wants to really emphasize something. So using a dash is a

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way of connecting something to a sentence, while also creating some distance.

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Thus, romantic relationships between clauses and phrases linked by dashes are notoriously hard to navigate.

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