Weird Writing Question from the CB Bluebook

<p>For some reason, I missed this and 2 other writing questions. But I don't seem to understand why the answer to the following question is D. It's from Practice Test 4, pg 601, number 7. </p>

<p>7.) Whether the ancient Egyptians actually sailed or did not to South America remains uncertain, but Heyerdahl's Ra II expedition demonstrated that they could have done so. </p>

<p>A.) Whether the ancient Egyptians actually sailed or did not
B.) Whether in actuality the ancient Egyptians sailed or did not
C.) The actuality of the sailing by the ancient Egyptians
D.) That the ancient Egyptains actually sailed
E.) The ancient Egyptians, their actual sailing</p>

<p>The answer is D. When inserting the phrase into the sentece, it sounds very weird (especially the "that"). Could someone explain why D. is the correct answer?</p>

<p>well, choice D just sounds right... and the others are obviously wrong</p>

<p>here, "That" = "The fact that"</p>

<p>True, the other answers are obviously wrong and thus I left the question blank. But wouldn't the answer be more close to "Whether, the ancient Egyptains sailed,"(not an answer choice) not "That the ancient Egyptians sailed." Sorry, it's probably easy, but for some reason I don't seem to understand it...</p>

<p>For these questions, you have to pick the BEST answer among the given choices, which is often not the answer you would expect. For this one, just know the following structure:</p>

<p>"That + clause = subject"</p>

<p>You might not be familiar with this structure because it is not commonly used. Hope that helped!</p>

<p>Haha, thanks. I'm not too much of a grammer person either; I go by recognizing bad sentence structures. I see now how it fits though, thanks.</p>