<p>Jesse passed the California bar examination last year, and since then is practicing law there.</p>
<p>I spotted two errors in this sentence:
1. There is a comma before "and" but no subject before "is practicing." It should be:
Jesse passed the Cal bar exam last year, and since then she is practicing law there.</p>
<ol>
<li>"Since" brings a present perfect tense to the main independent clause:
Jesse passed the Cal bar exam last year, and since then she has been practicing law there.</li>
</ol>
<p>Can someone verify this for me? Thanx in advance :)</p>
<p>I don’t think that is the correct answer for that question.</p>
<p>It should read(if I recall correctly): Jesse passed the California bar examination last year, and he has been practicing law in California ever since.</p>
<p>A) as written.</p>
<p>To add, the sentence you wrote is also wrong because there does not refer to anything.</p>
<p>um… you know what, I don’t recall where this question came from … </p>
<p>But why do say that there is a problem with “there”? Just because it is too unspecific?</p>
<p>P.S.- Yeah, the correct question you wrote does fulfill the two criteria I’ve written.</p>
<p>“there” should refer to California but California was never introduced.</p>
<p>The comma isn’t wrong. Commas are normally used to separate independent clauses, but it can be used in other cases to stylistically signify a pause. For example, if I say I came, and then conquered, the pause may be desirable to the writer for reasons regarding style. There isn’t anything grammatically wrong with the comma. Also, punctuation (or problems related to punctuation) isn’t tested on the SAT.</p>
<p>You are right that it should be “since then has been practicing” instead of “since then is practicing.”</p>
<p>“practicing law there” should be “practicing law in California” because “California” was introduced in the sentence as part of the name “California bar examination” (it’s an adjective here to describe bar examination, not a noun), so “there” sounds weird referring back to it.</p>
<p>@JefferyJung, crazybandit</p>
<p>thank you so much; your explanations are all very succinct and understandable :)</p>