SAT OwlQuestion bank / Form, Structure, and Sense
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and longtime activist with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ______ to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
refusing
refused
having refused
to refuse
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
The sentence needs a main verb for the subject "Rosa Parks." The appositive between the commas only describes her. "Refused" is a finite past-tense verb that completes the sentence. The other choices are not finite verbs, so they would leave the sentence without a main verb.
Choice A sounds natural after the long appositive, but "refusing" cannot serve as a sentence's main verb on its own.
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