Multiple choice

Directions: The following question presents a sentence, part of which or all of which is underlined. Beneath the sentence you will find five ways of phrasing the underlined part. The first of these repeats the original; the other four are different. If you think the original is best, choose the first answer; otherwise choose one of the others.

Federal authorities involved in the investigation have found the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious of strangers.

  1. the local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and are

  2. local witnesses to be difficult to locate, reticent, and are

  3. that local witnesses are difficult to locate, reticent, and

  4. local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are

  5. that local witnesses are difficult to locate and reticent, and they are
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The original breaks parallel structure: 'difficult to locate, reticent, and are suspicious' mixes adjectives and verbs. Option C fixes this by removing the redundant 'are' to create proper parallelism: 'difficult to locate, reticent, and [suspicious].' It also properly uses the 'that' clause structure after 'found.'

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