After the printing press was introduced in 1440, handwritten manuscripts from Europe's medieval period were often destroyed and the paper...

Let's begin by understanding the meaning of this sentence. We'll use our understanding of pause points and segment the sentence as shown - understanding and assimilating the meaning of each segment bit by bit!

Sentence Structure

Sentence 1:

• After the printing press was introduced in 1440,
• handwritten manuscripts
  • from Europe's medieval period
  were often destroyed
  and the paper used for other purposes.

Sentence 2:

• In one instance,
• pages
  • from [?]
  • a collection of Norse tales
    • dating to 1270
  were discovered
  • lining a bishop's miter (hat).

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start with the first sentence to understand the context:

"After the printing press was introduced in 1440, handwritten manuscripts from Europe's medieval period were often destroyed and the paper used for other purposes."

This tells us:

• Once printing presses arrived, old handwritten manuscripts weren't valued
• These manuscripts were often destroyed and their paper recycled

Now let's move to the second sentence where we have the blank:

"In one instance, pages ______ a collection of Norse tales dating to 1270 were discovered lining a bishop's miter (hat)."

This is where we have the blank. Let's look at the choices:

• They all have the word "from"
• But they differ in what comes after: colon, comma, nothing, or dash

To see what works here, let's read the full sentence and understand what it's saying!

The sentence structure is:

• Subject: "pages"
• Then we have: "from a collection of Norse tales dating to 1270"
• Main verb: "were discovered"
• Where/how: "lining a bishop's miter"

So the complete picture is:

• Pages (from a certain collection) were discovered being used as hat lining
• Specifically, these pages came from a collection of Norse tales from 1270

What do we notice about the structure here?

The phrase "from a collection of Norse tales dating to 1270" is describing which pages we're talking about:

• "From" is a preposition showing where the pages came from
• "a collection of Norse tales dating to 1270" is what follows the preposition - it's the object of the preposition
• Together, they form a prepositional phrase: "from a collection..."

This is a key grammatical relationship:

• A preposition and its object work together as a tight unit
• They connect directly without any punctuation between them
• The preposition "from" needs to flow right into "a collection"

So we need: from with no punctuation following it - Choice C.

The phrase flows naturally: "pages from a collection of Norse tales..."

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Prepositions Connect Directly to Their Objects

When you use a preposition (like "from," "to," "in," "with," "about"), it must connect directly to what follows it - its object - without any punctuation in between. A preposition and its object form a grammatical unit (called a prepositional phrase in grammar terms).

The pattern:

• Preposition + Object (no punctuation between them)

Examples:

• ✓ "The letter from my grandmother arrived yesterday"
  • from = preposition
  • my grandmother = object
  • No punctuation between them

• ✗ "The letter from: my grandmother arrived yesterday"
  • Incorrect - colon breaks the preposition-object connection

• ✓ "We talked about the incident for hours"
  • about = preposition
  • the incident = object
  • No punctuation between them

In this question:

• Preposition: "from"
• Object: "a collection of Norse tales dating to 1270"
• They must connect directly: "pages from a collection of Norse tales..."

Any punctuation after "from" would incorrectly break this grammatical unit.