One Grammar Question

<p>1.) Many of William Blake’s etchings were inspired by his notions of good and evil, accompanied by subject-appropriate writings.</p>

<p>(C) etchings, inspired by his notions of good and evil, were accompanied by</p>

<p>My Question: Why is the sentence wrong? I picked A, but the correct answer is C. Is it wrong to have a participial phrase (or prepositional phrase?) with the verb, “accompanied by” after the comma? How come this is incorrect while something like this is considered correct: “The boy climbed up the tree, singing a song.”</p>

<p>As written “accompanied by” is disconnected from the rest of sentence. Accompanied is the past participle of the verb accompany. It’s looking for a verb – “were” – since it references “etchings”. But the “were” in the sentence has already been put to use. So if you keep it with “inspired” you need another “were”.</p>

<p>I suppose you can write:</p>

<p>“Many of William Blake’s etchings were inspired by his notions of good and evil. They were accompanied by subject-appropriate writings.” </p>

<p>But (C) is much better and simpler.</p>