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SAT (Fall 2023)

Course: SAT (Fall 2023) > Unit 11

Lesson 3: Writing: Grammar

Writing: Nonrestrictive and parenthetical elements — Example

Watch Sal work through a basic nonrestrictive and parenthetical elements question from the SAT Writing and Language Test.

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Video transcript

- [Instructor] My history professor, who always criticizes me for being late, missed our scheduled review session. So you could tell just in how I read it, I had to put a pause here in order for it to make sense, in order for who always criticizes me for being late to describe my history professor. So ideally, I wanna put a comma at the beginning and the end of this clause that is describing my history professor. I don't wanna keep it the same. I wanna put a comma at the beginning and at the end. So I like that choice. Now, let's look at these other ones. My history professor, dash, who always criticizes me for being late. You could separate this clause with a dash, but you would want to separate it with a dash on either side. So if you put a dash here, you would wanna put a dash right over there, which you could view it as a stronger parenthetical. My history professor, who always criticizes me for being late, missed our scheduled review session. I always view the dash as like, make sure you're seeing this thing. It's, hey, I'm really gonna make it clear, this is the person who always criticizes me for being late. So it would've been an option if they had a dash on either end, but they don't, so we're gonna rule this one out. And for the same reason, they only put a dash at the right side but not at the left side, so I would rule this one out as well.