Digital SAT Reading & Writing: A Couple of Tricky 'However' Questions

These questions are hard to categorize. The College Board would refer to these as "Boundaries" questions, as they "require test takers to apply Standard English conventions when editing short texts (typically one or two sentences in length) to ensure that the resultant sentence(s) conventionally separate or join phrases, clauses, or sentences."

The two questions I go through in this video both involve the transition word "however," but the concepts discussed here would apply just the same for any transitional adverb (aka conjunctive adverb), such as "therefore," "nevertheless," "still," and so on.

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Full text of example questions:

(1) Journalists have dubbed Gil Scott-Heron the “godfather of rap,” a title that has appeared in
hundreds of articles about him since the 1990s. Scott-Heron himself resisted the godfather _______ feeling that it didn’t encapsulate his devotion to the broader African American blues music tradition as well as “bluesologist,” the moniker he preferred.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A) nickname, however
B) nickname, however;
C) nickname, however,
D) nickname; however,

(2) Sociologist Alton Okinaka sits on the review board tasked with adding new sites to the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places, which includes Pi‘ilanihale Heiau and the ‘Ōpaeka‘a Road Bridge. Okinaka doesn’t make such decisions _______ all historical designations must be approved by a group of nine other experts from the fields of architecture, archaeology, history, and Hawaiian culture.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A) single-handedly, however;
B) single-handedly; however,
C) single-handedly, however,
D) single-handedly however

[abstraction]

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[quillerity]

very good explaination man. I solved both of them tho. just by observing the way you approached the first question. i was able to solve that second one on my own. THANKSS again for the clarification of punctuations

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[dibyanilanjan]

hey man I did understand your first question but still I am not quite clear about the second one can you please elaborate how (the red portion and the blue portion is connected)

[roangurnani]

in the first example, you chose option C because the sentence "feeling that it didnt....he preferred" is a dependent clause? i am confused because you said that if the second clause opposes the first then a semicolon should appear after 'however', so why isnt it the case with the first example? does the ", however," have the same effect as the ", however ;" but with a dependent clause following it?

[shotzszn]

hey sorry i couldnt understand why it isnt B in the single handedly ;however, because the blue sentence is used to contrast the red sentence so doesnt that mean the word however should be in the second clause and not in the first?