Can you correct this sentence?

Question

The White Haven farm-comprising a main house, a chicken coop, an ice house, a stone building, and a barn; was built in 1818 and bought two years later by Frederick Dent, whose daughter Julia Dent would marry grant in 1848.

A. no change

B. barn, it

C. barn-

D. barn

Answer 1

The correct answer would be "C. barn-" since in the sentence of the question barn is the last word of the nonrestrictive, parenthetical phrase comprising a main house, a chicken coop, an ice house, a stone building, and a barn, and the beginning punctuation setting off this parenthetical phrase is a - after farm (note that the entire phrase is nonrestrictive, i.e., it adds only additional but nonessential information to the sentence, since if removed from the sentence the result would still be grammatical, i.e., The White Haven farm [sic] was built in 1818 and bought two years later by Frederick Dent, whose daughter Julia Dent would marry grant [sic] in 1848).

 

Nonrestrictive elements of a sentence are usually set off with commas, and though dashes (which are usually written as two hyphens together, i.e., -- which most word processors will automatically convert into a continuous two-space dash) may also be used for this function as in the example in this question, generally these are reserved for special emphasis, that is, introducing nonrestrictive information that might, for example, be rather surprising to the writer and/or reader. In this case, however, the pedestrian, mostly neutral detailed description of the White Haven property represented by comprising a main house, a chicken coop, an ice house, a stone building, and a barn doesn't seem so special that it would warrant being set off with dashes; I would have used commas (but never a semicolon, as in how the sentence is actually written).