Does this 1 ACT question make sense to anyone?

Test Preparation ACT Preparation
1

<p>The ACT website provides practice questions for all subjects, this is the first of 75 questions, ill provide the passage in which it pertains to. Ill put the part of the passage that's being analyzed in parentheses because this forum does not support underlines.</p>

<p>I grew up with buckets, shovels, and nets (waiting by the back door; ) hip-waders hanging in the closet; tide table charts covering the refrigerator door; and a microscope sitting on the kitchen table.</p>

<p>A. NO CHANGE
B. waiting, by the back door,
C. waiting by the back door,
D. waiting by the back door</p>

<p>I chose C, which apparently is wrong. The ACT website says the answer is A, which makes absolutely no sense to me. I thought that when you have a ; you need an independent clause. "Hip-waders hanging in the closet" and "tide table charts covering the refrigerator door" and "and a microscope sitting on the kitchen table" are all not independent clauses. </p>

<p>Am i delusional or is it the ACT website?</p>

<p>Here is their explanation</p>

<p>The best answer is A. It provides the best punctuation for the underlined portion. The phrase "waiting by the back door" describes the noun nets and is essential because it tells which nets the narrator "grew up with." Therefore, no comma should be placed after nets. The semicolon after the word door is appropriate because semicolons are used between items in a series when one or more of these items include commas.</p>

<p>The best answer is NOT B because the first comma after waiting is unnecessary. In addition, the appropriate punctuation after door should be a semicolon (not a comma). Semicolons are used between items in a series when one or more of these items include commas.</p>

<p>The best answer is NOT C because the appropriate punctuation after door should be a semicolon and not a comma. Semicolons are used between items in a series when one or more of these items include commas.</p>

<p>The best answer is NOT D because the punctuation, in this case a semicolon, is missing after the word door. It is needed to set off the first of this sentence's three items in a series.</p>

<p>Edit: Nvm, i've found another use for semicolons that I've never seen used ever or covered in either of my 2 ACT books. I do have a hunch I'll never see it on an ACT test again but I suppose it's good to know.</p>

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<p>Yeah, the rule is that items in lists are usually separated with commas; however, if the list items themselves contain commas, then semicolons can be used as separators to outrank those commas. As in the question above, the list contains a list within it that has commas, so to separate that from the main list you would use semicolons.</p>

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<p>Co1ton is right… Because the items in the list contain commas, you can use semicolons to seperate list items. Even if you don’t know the rule, look at what’s given to you. All of the other things are separated by semicolons, so to keep the sentence parallel, the first two items must also be separated by semicolons.</p>

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<p>This is a great example of parallelism on the ACT. As you can see, all the other list items are separated by a semi-colon, so you can infer that there isn’t going to be a change.</p>