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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What sentence is NOT used as an example of when the reversible colon is appropriate?
(a) I want a better life::my family.
(b) My eyes water when I speak about my family::I don't like to speak about my family.
(c) Sex::yes.
(d) I've never felt loved by anyone outside of my family::my persistent depression.

2. What does the speaker call the severed web symbol?
(a) A Scarcely Salvageable Sentence.
(b) A Barely Tolerable Subsitute.
(c) An Inadequately Worded Idiom.
(d) A Hardly Acceptable Replacement.

3. How may fights have the speaker's parent had in all of their marriage?
(a) 10.
(b) Hundreds.
(c) Dozens.
(d) 1.

4. What does the speaker acknowledge about the should-have brackets in the final paragraph of the story?
(a) They rarely exist in conversations between himself and his brother.
(b) They are used less frequently among his family members lately.
(c) They are used more often between him and his father.
(d) Each family member's sense of the should-haves is different.

5. What does the speaker say low points tend to do in his communication with family?
(a) Confuse the situation.
(b) Make things better.
(c) Not change anything.
(d) Make things worse.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the speaker say familial communication always has to do with?

2. What do the should have brackets denote?

3. What symbol represents the "backup"?

4. Which symbol represents the corroboration mark?

5. In the final conversation in the story, what is Jonathan's response to his father's {I love you}?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the phone call between the speaker and his brother after he ended up in intensive care.

2. What is one example the speaker gives of the use of a reversible colon?

3. What does the severed web symbolize? What does the speaker call this?

4. What is something the speaker and his brother do not discuss? How do you know?

5. Describe the conversation the speaker relays between mother and father to show use of the corroboration mark.

6. What does the speaker realize about himself after his father discusses how his brother was already a yes man?

7. What are low points? What conversation between the speaker and his mother does he use to exemplify their use?

8. What are the final words that remain unspoken, as shown by the use of the should-have brackets, between father and son in the final conversation of the story?

9. What does the speaker's father confess to him about his marriage after his 19th heart attack?

10. What are the should-have brackets?

(see the answer keys)

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