From afar, African American ﬁber artist Bisa Butler’s portraits look like paintings, their depictions of human faces, bodies,
and clothing so intricate that it seems only a ﬁne brush could have rendered them. When viewed up close, however, the
portraits reveal themselves to be ______ stitching barely visible among the thousands of pieces of printed, microcut fabric.
quilts, and the
quilts, the
quilts; the
quilts. The
Choice B is the best answer. The convention being tested is punctuation use between a main clause and a supplementary
phrase. This choice correctly uses a comma to mark the boundary between the main clause (“the portraits...quilts”) and the
supplementary noun phrase (“the stitching...fabric”) that provides a further description of how the portraits can be identiﬁed
as quilts.
Choice A is incorrect. A comma and the conjunction “and” can’t be used in this way to join a main clause and a
supplementary noun phrase. Choice C is incorrect because a semicolon can’t be used in this way to join a main clause and a
supplementary noun phrase. Choice D is incorrect because it results in a rhetorically unacceptable sentence fragment
beginning with “the stitching.”