Question

Choose the appropriate words to fill in the blanks.

Mark Twain was responsible for many striking, mostly cynical ______, such as "Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, and astonish the rest." ______ can sometimes end up as ______, but rarely would someone use them as an ______.

• A. epitaphs, Epitaphs, epigrams, epigraph
• B. epigraphs, Epigraphs, epitaphs, epigraph
• C. epigrams, Epitaphs, epigrams, epigraph
• D. epigrams, Epigrams, epigraphs, epitaph

Hint:

Work out which of the three related words, epigram, epitaph or epigraph, fits each blank by meaning before looking at the options.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Step 1: Understanding the Question:
The sentence has four blanks, and we need to pick the option that fills all four with the right form of three related but different words: epigram, epitaph and epigraph.

Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Before checking the options, fix the meaning of each word. An epigram is a short, witty or clever saying, exactly the kind of one liner Mark Twain was famous for. An epitaph is words carved on a tomb to remember someone who died. An epigraph is a short quotation placed at the start of a book, chapter or building, often borrowed from someone else's writing. Once these three meanings are clear, each blank can be filled by sense rather than by guesswork.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
The first blank describes what Mark Twain was famous for producing: cynical, striking one liners like the quoted line. That matches "epigrams", not "epitaphs" (tomb inscriptions) or "epigraphs" (opening quotations), since Twain was writing witty remarks, not memorial text.
The second blank starts a new sentence and needs the same word, capitalised: "Epigrams".
The third blank continues the thought: a witty epigram, if it becomes well known, is often later reused as an epigraph at the start of a book or chapter, because editors like to open a work with a punchy quotation. So the third blank is "epigraphs".
The fourth blank needs the odd one out: despite epigrams being clever, they are rarely solemn enough to be carved on a grave, so people would almost never use one as an "epitaph".
Checking each option against this order (epigrams, Epigrams, epigraphs, epitaph): the first option swaps the first and third words; the second option starts with "epigraphs", which is wrong for what Twain wrote; the third option keeps the first blank right but wrongly repeats "Epitaphs" for the second blank; only the fourth option lines up all four blanks correctly.

Step 4: Final Answer:
The correct sequence is epigrams, Epigrams, epigraphs, epitaph, which is option 4.