Hi,everyone. Please help me with the following sentence, which appears in the Sentence Correction section of a test paper, where the test taker is required to point out one and only one mistake in each sentence listed and correct it. A longstanding reticence, perhaps born of a national abhorrence of monarchies and kings, kept faces and portraits of United States coins as a regular practice until 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. I think the problem with this sentence is the tense of the main verb "keep". So, I would like to change "kept" to "had kept" to distance 1909,the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth and what Americans did or had done before that year. However, I am not sure of it. I would like you to help me with it. Thanks. Richard
Unless you've got a typo in here, there is a correctly spelled incorrect word that screws up the entire thought. I don't think it's a matter of "kept."
Thank all for your help. Yesterday a student of mine gave me 31 sentences, each of which has an error of any possible sort, which test takers are required to correct. The student collected these 31 sentences from the graduate school entrance test papers of another university for the past few years and she is cramming for next year's test, which is coming soon. From your replies to my question, I now know that I did not understand the meaning of the sentence.
understandable, richard, since 'kept off' is not the best, or most grammatical way to word 'not allowed on'...
