Question

Amongst the options below, choose the one which is correctly punctuated.

• A. Last Sunday, we went canoeing on the Brahmaputra river. You could see eagles high in the trees above us.
• B. While we were canoeing last Sunday on the Brahmaputra river, high in the trees above us, you could see eagles.
• C. We went canoeing last Sunday on the Brahmaputra river, and high in the trees above us, we could see eagles.
• D. High in the trees above, the eagles were looking down at you, as we canoed on the Brahmaputra river last Sunday.

Hint:

Check that the pronoun stays the same person throughout the sentence and that the comma before "and" correctly joins two full clauses.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

All five original options describe the same trip, so the question really comes down to which sentence stays grammatically clean: consistent pronouns, no misplaced modifiers, and correct comma use when joining clauses.

1. Option 1: Starts with "we" but then switches to "You could see eagles" in the second sentence. This is a pronoun shift; the person doing the canoeing should not suddenly change from "we" to "you" with no one new introduced.
2. Option 2: The clause "While we were canoeing" sets up "we" as the subject, but the main clause then switches to "you could see eagles". This is the same pronoun-shift problem, made worse by placing the location phrase "high in the trees above us" awkwardly in the middle of the sentence.
3. Option 3: "We went canoeing last Sunday on the Brahmaputra river, and high in the trees above us, we could see eagles." Both clauses use "we" consistently, a comma is correctly placed before the coordinating conjunction "and" joining two independent clauses, and the modifier "high in the trees above us" sits right next to what it describes, without creating confusion.
4. Option 4: Opens with "High in the trees above", which should describe the eagles, but then says "the eagles were looking down at you", introducing "you" out of nowhere and changing the meaning; now the eagles are watching a person instead of the writer and friends watching the eagles.

Only option 3 keeps one consistent pronoun throughout, places its modifying phrase next to the noun it describes, and uses a comma correctly before "and" to join two complete clauses. That makes it the correctly punctuated, and correctly built, sentence.

Let's summarize:

• A sentence must keep the same pronoun for the same people throughout, unless a new person is clearly introduced.
• Use a comma before "and"/"but"/"or" only when it joins two independent clauses, and option 3 does this correctly.
• A modifying phrase like "high in the trees above us" should sit next to the noun or clause it describes.

The correct choice is option 3.