Psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz was hired by a soda company to determine how much artificial sweetener _______ After conducting consumer taste...

Sentence Structure

• Psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz
  • was hired by a soda company
    • to determine how much artificial sweetener [? / no ?] most people prefer
      • in a diet drink [? / .]
• After conducting consumer taste tests,
• he
  • found that no such ideal existed:
    • participants
      • expressed a wide range of preferences
        • for different blends of sweetener, carbonization, and flavoring.

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start reading from the beginning:

The sentence tells us that:

• Psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz was hired by a soda company
• He was hired with a specific purpose: to determine how much artificial sweetener ______

Now here's where we need to fill in the blank. Let's look at our choices:

• Choice A: do most people prefer in a diet drink?
• Choice B: do most people prefer in a diet drink.
• Choice C: most people prefer in a diet drink?
• Choice D: most people prefer in a diet drink.

What are we deciding? Two things:

• Whether to use "do most people prefer" (question word order) or "most people prefer" (regular word order)
• Whether to end with a question mark or a period

Based on what we've read, let's think about the structure:

• The sentence says: "He was hired to determine [something]"
• What follows "determine" is what he was supposed to figure out
• This creates what we call an embedded or indirect question -
  • it's a question that's tucked inside a larger statement

Here's the key pattern:

• When you embed a question inside a statement (after words like "determine," "ask," "wonder," "discover"), two things happen:
  • You use regular word order (NOT question word order with "do")
  • You don't use a question mark (because the whole sentence is a statement, not a question)

Compare:

• Direct question standing alone: "How much sweetener DO most people PREFER?"
• Embedded in a statement: "He was hired to determine how much sweetener most people prefer." (no "do," no question mark)

So we need Choice D: "most people prefer in a diet drink."

Now let's read the rest to see the complete picture:

"After conducting consumer taste tests, he found that no such ideal existed: participants expressed a wide range of preferences for different blends of sweetener, carbonization, and flavoring."

This tells us the results:

• After doing the tests, Moskowitz discovered there was no single "ideal" amount of sweetener
• Instead, people had many different preferences

The complete meaning: Moskowitz was hired to figure out the ideal amount of sweetener, but his research showed that no single ideal exists - people's preferences vary widely.

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Embedded Questions vs. Direct Questions

When a question is embedded (tucked inside) a larger statement - often after verbs like "determine," "ask," "wonder," "know," "discover" - it becomes an indirect question (called that in grammar terms). Indirect questions follow different rules than direct questions:

Pattern for Direct Questions (standing alone):

• Use inverted word order: "How old ARE you?" / "What DO they want?"
• End with a question mark

Pattern for Embedded/Indirect Questions (part of a statement):

• Use regular word order: "She asked how old I was" / "They wondered what we wanted"
• No question mark (the whole sentence is a statement, so use a period)

In our question:

• Direct question version: "How much artificial sweetener DO most people PREFER in a diet drink?"
• Embedded in the statement: "He was hired to determine how much artificial sweetener most people prefer in a diet drink."
  • Regular word order (no "do")
  • Period at the end (it's a statement about what he was hired to do)

Key signal words that often introduce embedded questions:

• determine, ask, wonder, know, discover, understand, figure out, show, reveal

When you see these words followed by question words (how, what, where, when, why, who), you know you're dealing with an embedded question that needs regular word order and no question mark.