Question

“Please, sir,” said Oliver “I want some more”.
Choose the option that best corrects the underlined words-
a) “Please sir,” said Oliver, “I want some more”.
b) “Please, sir,” said Oliver, “I want some more”.
c) “Please sir”, said Oliver; “I want some more”.
d) No change

Answer 1

Hint:
The changes made in the given options are mostly of punctuation marks. There are punctuation marks correctly or wrongly placed in the given sentences and we need to find them.

Complete answer:
Punctuation mark is a mark such as a full stop, a comma, a question mark, inverted commas, etc., which are used in writing to separate sentences and their elements and to clarify their meaning. The given sentence has only two commas, one after ‘please’ and one after ‘sir'.
Now, let us examine all the given options to find out the correct answer :
Option ‘a' – it has a comma after ‘sir’ and after ‘Oliver’. Both the commas are correctly placed. It also has two pairs of inverted commas, which are also correctly placed.
Option ‘b’ – this option has three commas, one after ‘please’, another after ‘’sir’, then one more after ‘Oliver’. This option is completely incorrect because there is no need for a comma after ‘please’.
Option ‘c’ – there is a semi colon used after ‘Oliver'. It is generally used after two closely related independent clauses. There is no need for a semi colon in the given sentence.
Option ‘d’ – we will choose this option if the other three options are incorrect or there is no mistake in the already given sentence.
As we have analysed all the given options, we can easily figure out the correct answer. Here, the correct sentence would be – “Please sir,” said Oliver, “I want some more”. Hence, option ‘a’ is the correct option.

Note:
A comma signifies pauses in a sentence and reduces ambiguity in lists. In option ‘b’, it is not needed after ‘please'.