The following sentence may need a semicolon to separate independent clauses. Select the answer option that will make the sentence correct. If the original sentence is correct, select No change.
Leaders in brick-and-mortar retail operations included John Wanamaker and Frank Winfield Woolworth, their successful counterparts in mail-order retail were Aaron Montgomery Ward, Richard Sears, and Alvah Curtis Roebuck.
Group of answer choices
Replace the comma after Ward with a semicolon.
No change
Replace the comma after Woolworth with a semicolon.
Replace the comma after Ward with a semicolon.
The correct answer is: Replace the comma after Woolworth with a semicolon.
To determine if the sentence needs a semicolon to separate independent clauses, we need to identify the independent clauses in the sentence. An independent clause is a group of words that can stand alone as a complete sentence. In this case, the independent clauses are "Leaders in brick-and-mortar retail operations included John Wanamaker and Frank Winfield Woolworth" and "their successful counterparts in mail-order retail were Aaron Montgomery Ward, Richard Sears, and Alvah Curtis Roebuck."
The sentence already has a comma separating the two independent clauses, which is incorrect. To correct this, we need to replace the comma with a semicolon. Therefore, the answer is:
Replace the comma after Woolworth with a semicolon.