ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour... How should the underlined portion of the below

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sentence be changed, if at all? Rachel was nominated for an academic scholarship

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because of her hard work, dedication, and ability to understand tough concepts.

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And here are the potential answers:

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So... what is this question asking?

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Is our sentence okay as is... or does it need a little love?

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First of all, is there anything about our sentence that feels wrong?

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We have a subject... no dangling participles... commas in the right place...

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...so things seem on the up and up. But let's look at the other options and see if there's

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a better one. How do we feel about A? We have an "and-comma"

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problem here.

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When listing items like this, the items should come one after another with only one "and"

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before the last one. So A can't be right. What about B?

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It would be okay if we added a third "her" before "ability"... but once we initiate

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the pattern, we have to stick with it. B's out.

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C's no good either. Even though there's no "her" before dedication, it's implied.

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It's also implied before the last item in the series... which means it would read as

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"and her the ability."

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Yuck. So we should leave it as is... and D is our answer.

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As in, "Done."

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