After a few __hesitation, he agreed that ___ not worth the risk.?

Question

a. minute's;its'
b. minutes';its
c. minutes';it's
d. minute's; it's

Answer 1

e. minutes; it was

minutes:

an apostrophe indicates possession of something and is not used in most cases to indicate plurality (more than one). Moments might be more accurate than minutes in this case.

it was: has to do with subject-verb agreement. The scentence implies that an idea (it) was considered in the past and must therefore be referred to in the past tense. I.e. It was rather than It's (It is)

Answer 2

I agree that the correct answer is c.

The way to check is to make the sentence singular and remove all possible contractions.

After a _______ hesitation, he agreed that _____ not worth the risk.

We would NOT say "After a minute hesitation" but we would say "After a minute's hesitation". This is the clue that we need a possessive here. So that narrows the answers down to b and c.

For the second part, we can say "He agreed that it is not worth the risk." "It is" becomes "it's". C is the answer.

And I disagree with the 'was' bit. If I were talking to someone about a conversation I had had about an on-going issue, I would say, "He agree that it is not worth the risk" because the issue is current, not in the past.

Answer 3

C.

A few minutes' hesitation is the correct phrase, despite the earlier answers. It's the minutes' hesitation, the minutes are taking on human qualities and hesitating. That's how the phrase is. It's "minutes' " not "minute's" because you preceed it with few. Few implies more than one, which means it's minutes. The possessive of more than one minute, minutes, is minutes'.

He agreed that it was or it is, whose conjunction is "it's". So C is your correct answer.

Answer 4

none of the above...it should be..... minutes, it was