Writing > Improving Sentences
Part or all of the following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A.
Woody Guthrie wrote and adapted more than a thousand songs, many of them are about the struggles of workers and the poor in the United States.
(A) many of them are
(B) many of which are
(C) many are
(D) which are, many of them,
(E) and many of them that are
The correct answer is B
Explanation
Choice (B) is correct. It avoids the comma-splice error of the original by using the pronoun “which” in place of the pronoun “them,” thereby turning what was originally an independent clause (“many of them are … United States”) into a relative clause that modifies “songs.”
