Plug the answer back into the sentence

Im convinced that one of the top reasons people lose points unnecessarily on Fixing Sentences is that they neglect to actually plug their chosen answer back into the sentence and consider it in context. While in some cases an answer may be clearly better worded or more grammatically correct than all the others, in many other cases multiple answers may appear perfectly correct on their own. In such cases especially ones in which you are dealing with a large amount of underlined information you should take the extra time and double-check that your answer actually works in terms of syntax, clarity, and punctuation. It is crucial that you pay attention to the punctuation aspect, particularly to the existing (non-underlined) commas within a sentence. This is because the comma splice (two full sentences joined only by a comma) is among the two or three most common types of wrong answer choices, and it shows up constantly. Constantly. If youre facing a full sentence on one side a comma, you cant have a full sentence on the other side. It doesnt matter how good it sounds or how much sense it makes in context its always going to be wrong. For example: During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could only be crafted according to traditional techniques, whereby they forbade artisans to leave and set up shop elsewhere. (A) whereby they forbade artisans to leave (B) as a result artisans were forbidden (C) artisans were thus forbidden (D) it being forbidden for artisans to leave (E) and so artisans were forbidden (A) and (D) are pretty clearly wrong, but (B), (C), and (E) all seem relatively plausible, right? Heres the problem, though: the non-underlined portion of the sentence contains full sentence + comma, meaning that another full sentence cannot follow the comma without creating a comma splice. If we plug these options into the sentence in turn, we get: (B) During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could only be crafted according to traditional techniques, as a result artisans were forbidden to leave and set up shop elsewhere. Thats two sentences separated by a comma, so thats out. (C) During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could only be crafted according to traditional techniques, artisans were thus forbidden to leave and set up shop elsewhere. Thats also two sentences separated by a comma, so its out too. It is very important to note that the second clause really is a full, grammatical stand-alone statement, even though it may not make logical sense outside of any context. (E) During the Renaissance, glass products made on the island of Murano could only be crafted according to traditional techniques, and so artisans were forbidden to leave and set up shop elsewhere. This answer correctly uses a FANBOYS conjunction to join the two sentences, thus eliminating the comma-splice problem.