Question

Transform the following sentence to avoid using ‘too’:
She was too shy to act on stage.
A) She was shy to act on stage.
B) She was so shy that she could not act on stage.
C) She was that shy that she preferred not to act on stage.
D) She preferred not to act on stage being shy.

Answer 1

Hint: In order to transform the sentence given in the above question, you need to keep one thing in mind. Whenever we are transforming a sentence containing “too” in it, we always use that. For example, the news was too good to be true. This will be transformed to: the news is so good that it cannot be true.

Complete answer:
A sentence can be classified into one of three types: basic, compound, or complex. A simple sentence may be transformed into a compound or complex sentence. This is normally accomplished by turning a phrase or word into a clause. A complex or compound sentence can be reduced to a simple sentence in the same way. This is accomplished by condensing a clause into a single word or phrase.

Now let us look into the given options:
Option A) She was shy to act on stage: It is incorrect because the impact of 'too' is not transformed anywhere in the option.
Option B) She was so shy that she could not act on stage: It is right since the given sentence has one independent and one dependent clause, so the conjunction 'that' is used to avoid using the word 'too.'
Option C) She was that shy that she preferred not to act on stage: It is incorrect because 'that' is incorrectly structured and preferred cannot be used.
Option D) She preferred not to act on stage being shy: It is incorrect because and preferred cannot be used also the impact of too is not transferred anywhere in the statement.

Thus the correct answer is option ‘B’.

Note: There are two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause in a compound-complex sentence. Simply put, it is a compound and complex sentence combined. Since compound-complex sentences are so long, identifying this sentence form can be difficult.