ShmoopTube

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Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by spider web weaving.

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It turns knitting into the blood sport we always knew it could be.

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Check out the following passage...

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For the sake of the logic and coherence of this paragraph, Sentence 5 should be placed where?

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And here are the potential answers...

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Like a spider’s web, good writing follows logical patterns.

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If it’s great writing, it ensnares us like a spider’s web too.

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Though hopefully the writer’s end goal isn’t to wrap readers in silk and drink their blood.

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As is, the paragraph has some issues with its flow of logic.

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Without our help, this writer isn’t going to be ensnaring readers any time soon.

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We can eliminate choice (A) because Sentence 5 is currently misplaced.

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The paragraph as a whole takes us through the methodical web-building process of orb-weaving

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spiders from start to finish.

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Sentence 5, however, starts out like this...

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“An orb-weaver begins its web...”

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The word “begins” is key here. Since Sentence 5 is telling us how orb-weavers begin their

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process, there’s a very good chance that it ought to be closer to the beginning.

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Currently, this paragraph is a very messy web.

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Option (D) doesn’t help matters.

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Sentence 3 details a step in the middle of the web-weaving process.

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So placing a sentence that describes the early process directly after 3 muddles the chain of events.

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We don’t have a lot of personal experience with web weaving, but we figure any time one

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puts the first step after the third trouble is bound to ensue.

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Choice (B) is promising because it does place Sentence 5 close to the beginning--

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all the way at the top of the paragraph in fact.

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This doesn’t work either, though, because the paragraph begins with this sentence...

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“We will focus on orb-weavers because their webs are the most recognizable.”

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This sentence gives us a great introduction for the paragraph....

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And sets us up to hear about the orb-weaving process.

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We can’t begin the description of the process until we know we’re about to hear it.

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Choice (C) is the correct answer.

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Sentence 5 is now placed snuggly after the intro and flows gracefully into Sentence 2.

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With this adjustment, the paragraph is now ready to ensnare eager readers.

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We’d proceed with caution if we were you.

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