Known for her massive photorealistic paintings of African American figures floating or swimming in pools, Calida Garcia ________ was the...

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

• Known for her massive photorealistic paintings
• of African American figures floating or swimming in pools,
• Calida Garcia Rawles [?]
• was the logical choice to design the book cover
• for Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Water Dancer,
• a novel about an African American man
• who can travel great distances through water.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

The sentence opens with a descriptive phrase:

• "Known for her massive photorealistic paintings of African American figures floating or swimming in pools"
  • This describes someone's artistic style and what they're famous for
  • The paintings are photorealistic (look like photographs) and feature a specific subject: African American figures in water

Then we get the name: "Calida Garcia Rawles"

• This is the artist being described

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

• A: dash (—)
• B: colon (:)
• C: comma (,)
• D: no punctuation

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

The sentence continues: "was the logical choice to design the book cover for Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Water Dancer"

• So Calida Garcia Rawles "was the logical choice"
• This is telling us what happened - she was selected for this project

Then we get more information: "a novel about an African American man who can travel great distances through water"

• This describes what The Water Dancer is about
• We can see why Rawles was a good choice - her artwork features people in water, and this novel is also about someone traveling through water

What do we notice about the structure here?

• "Calida Garcia Rawles" is the subject of the sentence
  • It's the person we're making a statement about
• "was" is the verb - the action word
  • It tells us what she was (the logical choice)
• These two elements - the subject and its verb - need to flow together directly
  • The subject performs or is described by the verb
  • There's no reason to interrupt this natural connection
  • The complete thought is: "Calida Garcia Rawles was the logical choice"

So we need no punctuation after Rawles. The answer is D.

• The subject flows directly to its verb: "Calida Garcia Rawles was..."
• Any punctuation here would create an incorrect interruption between these two essential elements

Grammar Concept Applied

Keeping Subjects Connected to Their Verbs

When you have a sentence where the subject needs to connect to its verb, don't interrupt that connection with punctuation:

Pattern:

• Opening modifier: Known for her paintings,
• Subject: Calida Garcia Rawles
• Verb (directly connected): was
• Rest of sentence: the logical choice...

The opening modifier gets set off with a comma, BUT then the subject flows directly to its verb with no punctuation between them.

Why this matters:

• The subject-verb relationship is the backbone of a sentence
• When these elements are next to each other, they should connect smoothly
• Putting punctuation between them (comma, dash, colon) disrupts the basic sentence structure

Another example:

• INCORRECT: "The artist, was chosen for the project."
• CORRECT: "The artist was chosen for the project."

In this question:

• "Calida Garcia Rawles" = subject
• "was" = verb
• They must connect directly: "Calida Garcia Rawles was the logical choice"
• No punctuation should interrupt this connection