The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History features artifacts from multiple eras, including items from the Revolutionary _____ ...

Sentence Structure

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History
features artifacts from multiple eras,
including items from the Revolutionary War (?)
the Civil War,
and the Space Age.

Where (?) =

• , (Choice A)
• ; (Choice B)
• , items from (Choice C)
• ; items from (Choice D)

Understanding the Meaning

Let's start from the beginning:

The sentence tells us:

• The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has artifacts from multiple eras

Then it gets specific about which eras:

• "including items from the Revolutionary War..."

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

• We're deciding between a comma or semicolon after "War"
• We're also deciding whether to repeat "items from" or not

Let's continue reading to see what follows:

• "...the Civil War, and the Space Age"

Now I can see what we have here! This is listing three specific examples of those eras:

1. the Revolutionary War
2. the Civil War
3. the Space Age

What do we notice about the structure here?

• The phrase "items from" at the beginning applies to ALL three items in the list
  • We don't need to repeat "items from" before each one
  • That's what makes this a parallel, flowing list

• These are simple noun phrases (names of historical eras) being listed
  • For a straightforward list like this, we separate items with commas
  • We don't need semicolons - those are for more complex situations

So we need Choice A: just a simple comma after "War."

This creates: "including items from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Space Age."

GRAMMAR CONCEPT APPLIED

Using Commas in Simple Lists with Shared Introductory Phrases

When you have a list where all items share the same introductory phrase, you state that phrase once at the beginning and then separate the items with commas:

Pattern: [introductory phrase] [item 1], [item 2], and [item 3]

Example 1:

• The recipe calls for vegetables from the garden, herbs from the market, and spices from the pantry.
  • "from" applies to all three prepositional phrases
  • We don't repeat it: "from the garden, from the market, from the pantry"

Example 2:

• She studied the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen.
  • "the works of" applies to all three authors
  • Simple commas separate the items

In our question:

• "items from" applies to all three eras: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Space Age
• We use commas to separate these simple noun phrases
• No need for semicolons (those are for more complex lists) or repetition (that would be redundant)