EXERCISE 35-2 Using Brackets and Ellipses

The following is a passage from an essay. The sentences that follow use quoted material from the passage. Correct any faulty use of brackets and ellipses, and add brackets and ellipses if necessary. Some sentences may be correct. Answers for the lettered sentences appear at the end of the Handbook.

Darwin himself was not entirely consistent in the language he used to describe his beliefs. And of course his views changed over the course of his life. Starting in 1876 he began writing a private autobiography for his children and grandchildren. In it he mentioned the change in his religious views. A gradual skepticism towards Christianity and the authenticity of the Bible gradually crept over him during the late 1830s—leaving him not a Christian, but no atheist either; rather a sort of theist. To be a “theist” in Darwin’s day was to believe that a supernatural deity had created nature or the universe but did not intervene in the course of history.

—John van Wyhe, “Was Charles Darwin an Atheist?”