Thousands of visitors from around the world travel to Siena during the [summer; not] only to witness the exciting race but also to attend the after-parties thrown by the locals.
[]: underlined portion
A. NO CHANGE
B. summer. Not
C. summer not
D. summer, not
The correct answer is D. I chose C - though I realize that we usually put a pause when we read that sentence out loud, is there a specific grammar point that explains why D is the correct answer, not C?
Not only . . . but also is a correlative conjunction. When the phrase it’s embedded in gets long, it’s typical to add commas.
Did you type this 100% accurately? If D is correct, I would expect a comma after race. If there is a comma after race, then the comma in D is required, in order to frame what is essentially a parenthetical phrase.
If there’s no comma after race, I think there’s a problem.
@WasatchWriter that’s what I was thinking when I first encountered the problem. There’s no comma before “but also …”
I’d still go with D for the sake of clarity. Partly because I’m accustomed to seeing and writing commas in just that spot. Also, that’s a lot of verb phrases; my gut tells me to separate them. Maybe that second comma is technically optional. I don’t recall.
This is one of the hardest questions I’ve seen. A and B are clearly wrong. “Not only…but also…” is a correlative conjunction and therefore can be removed from the sentence, so the comma is nice to include. I don’t know if C is actually wrong, but D is a better answer.
Two important points: