Read the excerpt from “The Gettysburg Address,” Abraham Lincoln’s famous speech. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. Which quotation correctly uses ellipsis to shorten Lincoln’s words?
Answer
A
Now we are engaged in a great civil war . . . testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
B
Now . . . in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
C
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation . . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
D
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated . . . We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
Explanation
An ellipsis marks words that have been left out. Choice C omits “or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,” leaving the grammatical sentence “testing whether that nation can long endure.” Choice A only replaces punctuation with an ellipsis, while choices B and D leave the surrounding wording incomplete or ungrammatical.
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