The museum's latest exhibition explores ancient pottery techniques from the Mediterranean _____ the cultural exchange between Greek and Roman civiliza...

Sentence Structure

• The museum's latest exhibition
  • explores ancient pottery techniques
    • from the Mediterranean [?]
  • highlighting the cultural exchange
    • between Greek and Roman civilizations
    • during the Classical period.

• Where [?] =
  • A: . Highlighting
  • B: and highlighting
  • C: (space) highlighting
  • D: , highlighting

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

The museum's latest exhibition explores ancient pottery techniques from the Mediterranean.

So the exhibition is about:

• Ancient pottery techniques
• Specifically from the Mediterranean region

This is where we have the blank.

Let's look at the choices:

• A gives us a period and starts a new sentence
• B gives us "and highlighting"
• C gives us no punctuation
• D gives us a comma

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

The sentence continues: "highlighting the cultural exchange between Greek and Roman civilizations during the Classical period."

Now let's understand what this part is doing:

• "highlighting the cultural exchange"
  • This is telling us something MORE about what the exhibition does
  • It's adding detail about the exhibition's focus

• The full picture:
  • The exhibition explores pottery techniques (main focus)
  • AND it highlights cultural exchange between civilizations (additional detail about what the exhibition accomplishes)

What do we notice about the structure here?

• We have two verb forms:
  • "explores" – this is the complete main verb, the primary action
  • "highlighting" – this is an -ing verb form

• The relationship between them:
  • "highlighting" is providing ADDITIONAL descriptive information about what the exhibition does
  • It's not a separate, equal action
  • It's more like saying "the exhibition explores... and in doing so, highlights"

• This creates a pattern:
  • Main clause (complete thought): "The museum's latest exhibition explores ancient pottery techniques from the Mediterranean"
  • Descriptive phrase with -ing verb: "highlighting the cultural exchange between Greek and Roman civilizations during the Classical period"

When you have a descriptive phrase starting with an -ing verb that comes after a main clause and adds information about the action, you need a comma to separate them.

So we need: region, highlighting (Choice D)

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Using Commas with Descriptive Phrases (Participial Phrases)

When you have a phrase built around an -ing verb form (called a participial phrase in grammar terms) that comes after a main clause and provides additional descriptive information, you need to set it off with a comma:

Pattern:

• Main clause (complete thought with subject and complete verb), comma, -ing phrase (additional descriptive information)

Example 1:

• The scientists discovered a new species, confirming their hypothesis about biodiversity
• Main clause: "The scientists discovered a new species"
• Descriptive -ing phrase: "confirming their hypothesis about biodiversity"

Example 2:

• The company announced record profits, surprising industry analysts
• Main clause: "The company announced record profits"
• Descriptive -ing phrase: "surprising industry analysts"

In our question:

• Main clause: "The museum's latest exhibition explores ancient pottery techniques from the Mediterranean"
• Descriptive -ing phrase: "highlighting the cultural exchange between Greek and Roman civilizations during the Classical period"
• Correct punctuation: comma between them

Why the comma matters:
The -ing phrase is doing descriptive work – it's adding information about the action in the main clause. It's not serving as the main verb of its own independent sentence, so it can't be separated with a period. It's not a coordinated equal action, so "and" doesn't work. The comma signals that this phrase is supplementary information describing the main action.