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Correct Answer: sense are
the sentence in question is: "wearing safety goggles and using your common sense, are essential to good woodworking habits." to determine if there is an error, we need to analyze the structure of the sentence.
1. **subject-verb agreement**: the subject of the sentence is "wearing safety goggles and using your common sense." this phrase is a compound gerund, consisting of two gerund phrases ("wearing safety goggles" and "using your common sense") acting as a single, compound subject. the verb for this compound subject should be "is" rather than "are," because the compound gerund functions as a singular entity describing a combined activity essential to good woodworking.
2. **punctuation**: the comma after "common sense" is misused. it incorrectly separates the subject from its verb. a comma should not be used between the subject and the verb unless there is a specific grammatical reason to do so, such as in a complex sentence with a nonessential clause or multiple clauses that need separation for clarity.
**correction options**:
- the correction "sense are" in each option except for "no change is necessary" attempts to address the issue of the comma. however, these options retain the incorrect verb "are."
**correct option**: the sentence should be corrected to: "wearing safety goggles and using your common sense is essential to good woodworking habits." therefore, none of the provided options correctly fix the error. the correct action would involve changing "are" to "is" and removing the comma.
**analysis of each option**:
- ", mark the start of a new paragraph with
sense are" – incorrect because it suggests a formatting change unrelated to the grammatical error.
- "sense are" – incorrect as it simply removes the comma but does not correct the verb agreement.
- "sense; are" – incorrect because the semicolon is inappropriate here and does not solve the verb agreement issue.
- "sense – are" – incorrect as the dash is unnecessary and the verb agreement remains incorrect.
- "no change is necessary." – incorrect because there is a grammatical error in verb agreement and comma usage.
**conclusion**: a suitable option would be to correct the verb to "is" and remove the comma, but since this option is not available among the choices, all the provided options are incorrect. the best approach in a test situation, if forced to choose, would be to select an option that at least removes the comma, aligning slightly more with grammatical correctness, though none corrects the verb agreement error.
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