American writer Edwidge Danticat, who emigrated from Haiti in 1981, has won acclaim for her powerful short stories, novels, and...

Sentence Structure

• American writer Edwidge Danticat,
• who emigrated from Haiti in 1981,
• has won acclaim
  • for her powerful short stories,
    • novels,
    • and essays [?]
• her lyrical yet unflinching depictions of her native country's turbulent history,
• writer Robert Antoni
  • has compared Danticat to Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

• "American writer Edwidge Danticat, who emigrated from Haiti in 1981"
  • This introduces our subject - Edwidge Danticat, a writer from Haiti who came to America in 1981
• "has won acclaim for her powerful short stories, novels, and ____"
  • She's received praise for her writing
  • Specifically for three types of works: short stories, novels, and [something else]

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

• All include "essays" (so that's the third item in the list)
• Then they vary: "essays, praising" / "essays and praising" / "essays praising" / "essays. Praising"

The big difference is Choice D uses a period (making two sentences) while the others try to continue as one sentence.

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

The text continues: "her lyrical yet unflinching depictions of her native country's turbulent history, writer Robert Antoni has compared Danticat to Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison."

Now let's understand what this is telling us:

• "Praising her lyrical yet unflinching depictions of her native country's turbulent history"
  • This describes someone praising Danticat's portrayal of Haiti's difficult history
  • "Lyrical" means poetic and beautiful
  • "Unflinching" means she doesn't shy away from harsh truths
• "writer Robert Antoni has compared Danticat to Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison"
  • Here's the KEY part: "writer Robert Antoni has compared"
  • This is a complete thought with its own subject (Robert Antoni) and verb (has compared)
  • He's comparing Danticat to the famous novelist Toni Morrison

What do we notice about the structure here?

• After that "praising" phrase, we have a complete independent thought:
  • "writer Robert Antoni has compared Danticat to Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison"
  • This is a full sentence with a subject, verb, and complete meaning
  • It can stand on its own
• If we try to attach this complete thought to the first sentence with just a comma or no punctuation, we create a run-on sentence
• We need to separate these into TWO sentences:
  • Sentence 1: Danticat has won acclaim for her short stories, novels, and essays.
  • Sentence 2: Praising her lyrical depictions of Haiti's history, writer Robert Antoni has compared Danticat to Toni Morrison.

In that second sentence, "Praising..." is an introductory phrase that describes why or in what context Robert Antoni made this comparison - it modifies "writer Robert Antoni."

So we need Choice D: "essays. Praising" - the period creates the necessary separation between two independent sentences.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Recognizing When You Need to Separate Complete Thoughts into Different Sentences

When you have two complete independent thoughts (each with its own subject and verb that express a complete idea), you need to separate them properly. You can't just run them together with a comma or no punctuation.

Complete independent thought = Subject + Verb + Complete idea that could stand alone

In this question:

• First complete thought: "American writer Edwidge Danticat, who emigrated from Haiti in 1981, has won acclaim for her powerful short stories, novels, and essays."
  • Subject: Edwidge Danticat
  • Verb: has won
  • Complete idea: She's won acclaim for her works
• Second complete thought: "Praising her lyrical yet unflinching depictions of her native country's turbulent history, writer Robert Antoni has compared Danticat to Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison."
  • Introductory phrase: "Praising her lyrical yet unflinching depictions..."
  • Subject: writer Robert Antoni
  • Verb: has compared
  • Complete idea: Antoni compared Danticat to Toni Morrison

How to separate complete thoughts:

1. Period (making two sentences) ✓ - what we need here
2. Semicolon (if thoughts are closely related)
3. Comma + coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet)

What NOT to do:

• Don't use just a comma between two complete thoughts (creates a "comma splice")
• Don't run them together with no punctuation (creates a "fused sentence")

Both of these errors are types of run-on sentences.

In our question, the period in Choice D properly separates these two complete thoughts into two grammatically correct sentences.