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Toni Morrison is one of America's outstanding authors, she is known for her critical essays, her novels, and her frequent appearances on television.

A. NO CHANGE

B. authors; she is known

C. authors famous

D. authors. Known

This is a practice problem for SAT. Quite clearly, A and D are incorrect, and I chose B for the answer (which is correct), but part of me still thinks that C could be correct as well. Could anyone clarify why C isn't correct?

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Let us take a look at the C option, which would make the sentence read as follows:

Toni Morrison is one of America's outstanding authors famous for her critical essays, her novels, and her frequent appearances on television.

Then the boldfaced part together as an adjective phrase modifies "authors". The sentence then would be saying that Toni Morison is one of those authors, the kind of authors that are famous for her critical essays, her novels, and her frequent appearances on television.

As you can see, this doesn't make much sense, because the adjective phrase that begins with famous/known for should modify one single writer, Toni Morrison, not an entire group. The group identified in the sentence is marked solely by the one characteristic modifier outstanding. And Toni Morrison is a member of these outstanding writers that is famous for her unique qualities (her critical essays, her novels, and her frequent appearances on television).

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    But E. authors, famous would be fine. I am even tempted to say that C. authors famous is fine. The adjective phrase famous for her... modifies Tony Morrison.
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 11:00
  • The grammatical correctness of a sentence never hinges on its punctuation. Punctuation reflects, it does not impose, grammaticality
    – TimR
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 11:08
  • @Tᴚoɯɐuo I take your point. But this is a typical SAT question, and I am just providing the most likely explanation in accordance with SAT reasoning...
    – Eddie Kal
    Commented Jul 24, 2018 at 17:53

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