The Mission 66 initiative, which was approved by Congress in 1956, represented a major investment in the infrastructure of
overburdened national ______ it prioritized physical improvements to the parks’ roads, utilities, employee housing, and visitor
facilities while also establishing educational programming for the public.
parks and
parks
parks;
parks,
Choice C is the best answer. The convention being tested is the coordination of main clauses within a sentence. This choice
uses a semicolon to correctly join the ﬁrst main clause (“The Mission…parks”) and the second main clause that begins with
“it.”
Choice A is incorrect. When coordinating two longer main clauses such as these, it’s conventional to use a comma before
the coordinating conjunction. Choice B is incorrect because it results in a run-on sentence. The two main clauses are fused
without punctuation and/or a conjunction. Choice D is incorrect because it results in a comma splice. Without a conjunction
following it, a comma can’t be used in this way to join two main clauses.