I’ve been seeing a lot of questions involving “repeated information”. Does this mean exactly the same or no? For example, in this one passage I’m looking at, it previously mentions that “… to keep my car from freezing…” which implies that it is cold. Now the question asks about the sentence "It was twenty below zero that afternoon, and the sky shone with a pale gray light. The question asks if the writer were to delete this sentence, what would it lose. One of the answer choices is “unnecessary details that repeat information given earlier in the paragraph.” Now I felt that this was ambiguous because it did repeat the fact that it was freezing. However, it did not mention previously that it was twenty below zero. How should I interpret this?
This is from my point of view, so take it lightly…but the fact that it was -20° is not needed if we only care about whether it was below freezing or not, and the fact that “the sky shone with a pale gray light” is also unnecessary in that context. So yes, I do think those details are unnecessary.
As for repeating information (and this is debatable), I don’t think the clause necessarily repeats information, since “to keep my car from freezing…” doesn’t automatically imply it is freezing, but that conditions are likely for below-freezing temperatures. On one hand, I can say:
“To keep my car from freezing, I drive it slowly around the block. But in fact, it was 40°F out today.”
So yes, I’m a bit unsure myself. I feel like if we had the other answer choices, we might be able to answer with more certainty using elimination.
^ Right, you are to pick the best answer and you haven’t provided enough info here.
Oops the answer choices are
F. an indication of the narrator’s response to the weather conditions in Fairbanks.
G. a detailed analysis of why the narrator had to plug the car engine into an electrical outlet.
H. descriptive details that help set the scene of the narrator’s meeting with Joan.
J. unnecessary details that repeat information given earlier in the paragraph.
The answer is H.
@thkim1011 Yeah, I would pick H over the others.
“It was twenty below…light” isn’t at all related to the narrator’s response to the weather conditions in Fairbanks; they are the actual weather conditions, so F isn’t correct.
G isn’t particularly detailed, and it probably isn’t clear that the fact that it was 20 below with overcast skies is the reason why the narrator had to plug the car engine.
J doesn’t really repeat information, as I said earlier.