Question

Read the sentence. Laura Bush was an active first lady she advocated for women’s health and promoted education. Which is the best way to rewrite this sentence? Laura Bush was an active first lady: She advocated for women’s health and promoted education. Laura Bush was an active first lady she advocated for: women’s health and promoted education. Laura Bush: was an active first lady she advocated for women’s health and promoted education.

Answer 1

Answer:

Laura Bush was an active first lady: She advocated for women’s health and promoted education.

Explanation:

Laura Bush was an active first lady: She advocated for women’s health and promoted education is an example of the use of a colon instead of a semicolon between independent clauses. The second sentence explains, illustrates, paraphrases, or expands information given in the first sentence. There is no definite agreement as to whether or not the first word of the second sentence should be capitalized. Usually, if the information in the second sentence is closely related to information from the first, the capital is not used. If the second sentence is a general or formal statement, many writers and editors decide to capitalize the first word. In the given example, the writer decided to capitalize the word she, although others may have done the opposite.

Answer 2

Answer: The best way to rewrite this sentence is "Laura Bush was an active first lady: She advocated for women’s health and promoted education".

Explanation: "Laura Bush was an active first lady she advocated for women’s health and promoted education" is a run-on sentence, which means it contains independent clauses that have been connected improperly since there is no punctuation mark that separates them. The two independent clauses that conform the sentence provided are "Laura Bush was an active first lady" and "she advocated for women's health and promoted education". Therefore, the punctuation mark must be included between these two clauses. The only option that rewrites the sentence following this rule is the first one ("Laura Bush was an active first lady: She advocated for women’s health and promoted education") since it adds a colon after the word "lady", that is to say where the first independent clause ends.