5 exercises — practise the escalating parenthetical "X, if not Y".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly inserts "if not" between two adjectives of increasing strength, set off by commas?
"...would be difficult, if not impossible, given the current deadline" correctly sets off "if not impossible" with commas immediately after the first adjective. Option B misplaces the first comma. Option C misplaces the comma before "difficult" instead of after it. Option D scrambles "impossible" and "not".
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if not" to escalate from "unlikely" to a stronger claim in a risk assessment?
"...is unlikely, if not entirely out of the question, given how many..." correctly places the comma before "if not" and closes the parenthetical with a second comma. Option B misplaces the comma inside "if not". Option C moves the opening comma to the wrong place. Option D scrambles "not" and "if".
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if not" between two nouns rather than adjectives, in a claim about effort required?
"...took days, if not weeks, of the team's attention" correctly applies the same comma-bracketed pattern to a pair of noun phrases ("days" / "weeks") rather than adjectives. Options B, C, and D misplace the commas or scramble the word order inside the parenthetical.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly distinguishes the scalar "if not" (escalating to a stronger claim) from a conditional "if" clause (introducing a hypothesis)?
"...rare, if not vanishingly rare, and it only reproduces if the cache is cold" correctly uses the scalar parenthetical for the first clause and a true conditional "if" clause for the second. The other options misplace commas or swap the two uses of "if" into the wrong clause.
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "if not" to escalate a claim about how outdated a dependency is?
"...outdated, if not deprecated outright, and should be replaced..." correctly brackets the escalating parenthetical with commas right after the first adjective. Options B, C, and D misplace commas or reorder the words inside the parenthetical.