Question

Select the correctly punctuated version of the following sentence:
according to a survey chandigarh is the cleanest city in India
a) According to a survey Chandigarh is the cleanest city in India.
b) According to a survey, Chandigarh is the cleanest city in india.
c) According to a survey chandigarh is the cleanest city in india.
d) According to a survey, Chandigarh is the cleanest city in India.

Answer 1

Hint: The words ‘chandigarh’ and ‘india’ are proper nouns, and the sentence is an assertive sentence. There is a clause ending after the word ‘survey’. There are specific punctuations for all these instances.

Complete answer:
Let us unpack the sentence first. The first part of the sentence says ‘according to a survey’. This phrase is followed by a complete sentence. This means that the first part of the sentence is a dependent clause, which should be separated by a comma.
The words ‘chandigarh’ and ‘india’ are names of specific places, which means that they are considered proper nouns. All proper nouns have their first letters capitalized.

Now, we know what kind of punctuation we need to have. Let’s look at the given options:

a) According to a survey Chandigarh is the cleanest city in India. - In this option, the first letter is capitalised. It ends in a simple full stop. However, there is no comma separating the dependent clause. the proper nouns have been capitalised. But, this is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
b) According to a survey, Chandigarh is the cleanest city in india. - In this option, the first letter is capitalised. It ends in a simple full stop. There is a comma after the dependent clause. However, one of the proper nouns does not have a capital letter. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
c) According to a survey chandigarh is the cleanest city in india. - In this option, the first letter has been capitalized. It ends in a simple full stop. There is no comma after the dependent clause and none of the proper nouns have a capital letter. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
d) According to a survey, Chandigarh is the cleanest city in India. - In this option, the first letter has been capitalized. It ends in a full stop. There is a comma after the dependent clause and the proper nouns have capital first letters. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.

Note:
Look at the given sentence and read it out loud. This will help you understand what kind of sentence it is. Look for grammatical anomalies, and correct them. Then, choose the option that has the correct punctuation.