With some 16,000 in attendance, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and ______ or FESTAC ‘77, as the event
was more commonly known—became the largest pan-African event on record. FESTAC drew people from around the world
to Lagos, Nigeria, for a monthlong celebration of Black and African art, scholarship, and activism.
Culture:
Culture—
Culture,
Culture
Choice B is the best answer. The text uses a dash to introduce a nonessential element that explains the acronym FESTAC.
The dash matches the dash that comes after “known,” ending the descriptive aside.
Choice A is incorrect. A colon can only come after an independent clause, which isn’t the case here. Choice C is incorrect.
While punctuation is required to set off “or FESTAC…known” from the rest of the sentence, nonessential elements must be
separated from the sentence with matching punctuation. Since a dash appears on the other side of the element, we can’t use
a comma here. Choice D is incorrect. The descriptive aside “or FESTAC…known” is a nonessential element that must be
separated with punctuation from the rest of the sentence. This choice fails to add the necessary punctuation before the
nonessential element.