As executive director of the Midwest Arts Foundation, Richard Park coordinates numerous initiatives across the region. His primary responsibilities in...

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

• As executive director of the Midwest Arts Foundation,
  • Richard Park
    • coordinates numerous initiatives across the region.
• His primary responsibilities
  • include distributing grants to emerging artists in five Midwestern states [?] facilitating educational workshops for underserved communities,
    • and representing the foundation at national arts policy conferences.

Understanding the Meaning

The first sentence gives us context about Richard Park:

• He's the executive director of the Midwest Arts Foundation
• He coordinates numerous initiatives across the region

Now the second sentence tells us specifically what his main job duties are:

"His primary responsibilities include..."

So we're about to get a list of what those responsibilities are.

The first responsibility:

• "distributing grants to emerging artists in five Midwestern states"

This is where we have the blank.

Let's look at the choices:

• A: states, facilitating (comma)
• B: states; facilitating (semicolon)
• C: states facilitating (no punctuation)
• D: states. Facilitating (period, new sentence)

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

Continuing after the blank:

• "facilitating educational workshops for underserved communities, and representing the foundation at national arts policy conferences."

Now let's understand what this full structure is telling us:

• His responsibilities "include":
  • distributing grants to emerging artists in five Midwestern states
  • facilitating educational workshops for underserved communities
  • representing the foundation at national arts policy conferences

What do we notice about the structure here?

• We have three parallel items in a list
  • All three start with -ing words (distributing, facilitating, representing)
  • All three describe actions that are part of his job
  • The word "and" appears before the third item
• Looking at the punctuation we can see:
  • There's already a comma after "communities" (before "and representing")
  • This tells us we have a standard list format
• In a list of three or more items, we separate them with commas:
  • Item 1, Item 2, and Item 3

So we need a comma after "states" to separate the first item from the second item in the list.

The correct answer is A: states, facilitating

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Using Commas to Separate Items in a Series

When you're listing three or more parallel items, you use commas to separate them, typically with "and" (or "or") before the final item:

Basic pattern:

• Item 1, Item 2, and Item 3

Examples:

1. Simple nouns:
   • "The foundation supports painters, sculptors, and photographers."
2. Phrases:
   • "She enjoys reading novels, watching documentaries, and visiting museums."
3. Longer descriptive phrases (like our question):
   • "His responsibilities include distributing grants to emerging artists, facilitating educational workshops for underserved communities, and representing the foundation at national conferences."

In this question:

• Item 1: "distributing grants to emerging artists in five Midwestern states"
• Item 2: "facilitating educational workshops for underserved communities"
• Item 3: "representing the foundation at national arts policy conferences"

The comma after "states" is essential to separate the first item from the second item in this three-item series. This punctuation pattern (called a serial comma or Oxford comma in grammar terms) keeps the list clear and properly structured.