september 2026 sat reading and writing answers: Every Reading and Writing question test-takers recalled on Reddit after the September 12, 2026 international Digital SAT, the answers students fought over, and which one is actually right — plus the full vocabulary list.
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The official r/Sat discussion thread for the September 12, 2026 international administration turned into a vocabulary argument within an hour of the last module ending. One word, lament, ran through at least seven separate comment chains. Another, byzantine, was answered correctly by almost everyone who had heard of it and missed by everyone who had not. This page is a summary of that Reddit thread — every Reading and Writing item it recalled, who argued what, the verified answer, and a vocabulary table of every word the thread mentioned.
How to read this page. Every question description below is a student's own recall from the r/Sat thread, quoted as they wrote it. Recall is incomplete and sometimes wrong — where students remembered different proper nouns, that is noted. The vote counts are counts of commenters who committed to an answer. The verified answer is ours, worked from the text itself, and it does not always agree with the popular vote.
What Reddit argued about, settled — at a glance
| Item | What students said (vote split) | Verified answer |
|---|---|---|
| "Lament" in the archaic passage | Regret (9 votes) · Enumerate (4) · Dispute (1) | Regret |
| The two underlined "fair"s (Shakespeare) | Impartial, ample (2) · Honourable, pleasing (2) | Honorable, pleasing |
| Century-old wiring, "playing detective" | byzantine (7 votes, nobody knew the word) | byzantine |
| Prehistoric island settlers' motivations | enigmatic (5) · pragmatic (4) · impulsive (3) | enigmatic |
| Sterilized soil and microbe slurries | populated (5) · sanitized (considered) | populated |
| Cybersecurity documentation | comprehensive (3) · inadequate (several "down to these 2") | comprehensive |
| R-22 refrigerant "rather than venting" | recover (6) · release (word-match camp) | recover |
| Caiman lizards in Florida | vulnerable (2, reported not argued) | vulnerable |
| Refrigerated truck drivers | "necessity" (4 votes, recalled as the noun) | necessitating |
| Consumer revolution, 1600–1750 | "overstated" choice (4) · "rich consumed more" (3) | Scholars overstated broader demographic shifts |
| The student-notes block (rock art, presentism, Lazarus species) | Mostly guesses; nobody reconstructed the choices | Claim beats description, every time |
| Island-territory punctuation item | Comma (3) · no commas (2) | Comma |
| The second Shakespeare passage (Richard III) | Flagged as "old English", not solved | Richard is faking his grief |
| Renovation "discretion" · the Ang capitalism item · the aluminium graph · the ticker-tape transition | Contradictory or unreconstructable | Unresolved — reasoning given below |
Item 1 — Did "lament" mean regret or enumerate?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"There was a vocab question on Eng module 2 that asks for the meaning of 'lament' in an archaic passage. What did you guys put?" — u/Wild_Acanthaceae_135
"Y'all debating enumerate vs regret … Brother I put dispute" — u/Smooth-Bumblebee-785
What students argued. This was the biggest fight in the entire thread — at least seven separate chains. Nine commenters backed regret, four backed enumerate, one went with dispute. u/AryaBro7 led the enumerate camp with "Enumerate. Asked my teacher" and the argument "Listing all the reasons or venting why she misses 19th century glory. Just replace word with rant and it makes sense" — and got downvoted to zero. u/crongras backed him: "she was old and all her associates/relations dying. hence she would count them and honor them." u/hiemelanie pushed back: "How could lament ever mean enumerate tho? It's not a standard synonym for the word." u/cloudyclairvoyance wobbled all the way to "I'm starting to think it is enumerate FML 💔". The best explanation came from u/No-Explanation7638:
"to lament something is to mourn it … so this lady is basically the 'back in my day' person at the family party. All her famous writer friends are dead or too old to leave the house, so now she just corners her relatives and goes on about how everything used to be better … Enumerate trips people up because you see 'two or three illustrious names' and your brain goes oh she's listing dudes. But look at what she's actually lamenting. Not the names. The passing of the great days. And you can't list a passing." — u/No-Explanation7638
The transferable rule: on a words-in-context item, find the grammatical object of the word before you weigh the choices. The object tells you which sense is even possible. "Lament the passing" rules out every meaning that needs a countable list.
Item 2 — What did the two underlined "fair"s mean in the Shakespeare passage?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"Shakespear two underlined 'fair's : impartial, ample" — u/Alarming-Let-7579
"vocab was quite harder with old english vocab in module 1 … Synonym to fair one where you had to choose two vocabs. Thy thou thing yk" — u/Hihikzz
What students argued. Two camps, evenly split. u/Alarming-Let-7579 and u/DigBetter758 read both "fair"s in modern senses: impartial (the courtroom sense) and ample (as in "a fair amount"). u/cloudyclairvoyance and u/FeelingBreath8543 read them as Elizabethan English and went with honourable, pleasing. u/Alarming-Let-7579 eventually gave up on it entirely: "honestly everything works and ive no idea how i was supposed to do ts 😭". u/Unknowner_gg spoke for the whole thread: "is collegeboard pulling old question formats?? like what is the old english vocab".
The transferable rule: when a passage is 400 years old, the modern sense of the word is usually the trap. Read the sentence around the word for what the speaker is doing — praising, accusing, mourning — and pick the sense that matches the act.
Item 3 — What does "byzantine" mean, and why did it wreck people?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"electrical wires : byzantine" — u/Alarming-Let-7579
"weird ahh words like byzantine for module 2" — u/Hihikzz
What students argued. Barely anyone disagreed on the answer. The complaint was that nobody knew the word. u/Born-Act-595: "Populated and Byzantine are 100% the answer". u/ae-wnnaslp: "I was thinking the same like wth is byzantine 😭😭". u/Hihikzz missed it purely on vocabulary: "Byzantine is correct. I got that one wrong cause I had no idea what that means other than byzantine empire." Seven commenters named it as the answer. Zero named anything else.
The transferable rule: when you do not know the word, do not guess it — eliminate the three you do know. Rudimentary, monotonous and fraudulent are all common words, and all three are provably wrong from the passage. That leaves one answer without you ever needing the definition.
Item 4 — Were the island settlers pragmatic, impulsive, or enigmatic?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"Is it pragmatic, impulsive, enigmatic or?" — u/ootobomy
"bro i put pragmatic bc the boat ppl were like dealing w problems in a sensible way so thats what i thought" — u/QuoteNational2749
What students argued. A clean three-way split: five for enigmatic, four for pragmatic, three for impulsive. u/Ecstatic_Fun879 wrote the most confident wrong answer in the thread: "It can't be either. Because the people didn't have resources, they had to go through such arduous ventures for the purpose of finding resources. It is pragmatic because they are putting it to action for a realistic result." u/Born-Act-595 flagged the real problem: "I thought enigmatic only meant mysterious, not puzzling". u/Chance-Idea-8427 got to two choices by elimination: "One was enigmatic and one was impulsive rest two straight up made no sense so I crossed them out."
The transferable rule: notice whose viewpoint the blank belongs to. "From our modern perspective" means the word describes our reaction, which instantly kills every choice that describes the subject's personality.
Item 5 — Did the researchers "populate" or "sanitize" the soil?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"mixing soil with slurge: populated" — u/Alarming-Let-7579
"I got like byzantine populated sanitized vulnerable necessity" — u/ae-wnnaslp
What students argued. One of the few near-consensus items. u/Born-Act-595: "Populated and Byzantine are 100% the answer". u/ContributionLucky697 confirmed: "correct ones were populated, vulnerable and necessity for me". The only wobble came from students who saw "sterilized" in the stem and reached for "sanitized."
The transferable rule: a choice that repeats a word already in the sentence is usually the distractor, not the answer. The College Board writes redundancy traps on purpose.
Item 6 — Why "comprehensive" beat "inadequate" on the cybersecurity item
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"Anyone remember which module the inadequate, comprehensive one was module 1 or 2 i got tricked 😭" — u/Buyka_gansukh
"Yea it had absence in it so comprehensive was right. I did not see that" — u/Buyka_gansukh
What students argued. Three students named comprehensive; several more reported being "down to these 2." u/LisaxSousthab_ explained the pick: "Exactly because the paper wasnt comprehensive they couldnt critically work thru it". When u/Illustrious-Diet5762 asked which module it came from, u/LisaxSousthab_ answered "Its module 1 not hard nor easy".
The transferable rule: circle every negative word in the sentence before you choose — absence, without, fails to, unlike, rather than. One missed negative flips the answer to its opposite.
Item 7 — "Release" or "recover" on the refrigerant question?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"There was a question which had vocab like release And the passage had smtg about venting What was the answer for that" — u/Reasonable-Novel-567
"also is venting release for vocab" — u/Dizzy_Emotion_1358
What students argued. This one resolved fast. Six commenters backed recover. u/QuoteNational2749: "recover! def". u/CR-s1rius gave the reasoning: "It's recover, the following sentence is functionally the definition for recover."
The transferable rule: when a passage says "rather than X," the blank must mean the opposite of X. Word-matching X is the single most common way students lose this item type.
Item 8 — The caiman lizards and the "vulnerable" turtles
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"I got like byzantine populated sanitized vulnerable necessity. Not sure tho, some of this might be in m1" — u/ae-wnnaslp
"Yes I got all of them except byzantine and correct ones were populated, vulnerable and necessity for me" — u/ContributionLucky697
What students argued. Reported rather than argued. Two students independently listed vulnerable as a correct answer and nobody contradicted them.
The transferable rule: on an ecology blank, decide who is the predator and who is the prey before you read the choices. Half the distractors exist to swap those roles.
Item 9 — The truck driver question: "necessity" or "necessitating"?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"What's the answer for the trick driver one in module one for module one was it necessity" — u/jdjsksmdndnd
"Necessity" — u/Honest_Situation_460 (the highest-scored reply in the chain, 4 points)
What students argued. Settled in one reply and confirmed by two more. The only wrinkle is the form of the word — students remembered the noun; the choice on the test is the verb.
The transferable rule: learn the reversal pairs. Necessitate/obviate, populate/sanitize, recover/release, comprehensive/inadequate — September's set was built almost entirely out of them.
Item 10 — What did the consumer revolution question actually ask?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"What was the question about like consumer revolution what did you guys pick for that" — u/OkArticle9550
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"Oooh the overstated broader demographic one, A I think" — u/cloudyclairvoyance · "wtf was that wealth gap revolution question in m2" — u/AmoebaCritical9550
What students argued. Four commenters backed the "overstated" choice; three backed a version where the wealthy simply consumed more. u/Ecstatic_Fun879 got the logic right and then eliminated the right answer: "Because the dead people's assets were adding to their own and made them falsely seem affluent..?? I ruled out the one where it said demographic shift though (bc it wasnt about a shift)." u/Altruistic-Duty9570 argued for the other reading: "only the rich people became rich and not everyone".
The transferable rule: when a researcher attacks a data source rather than a conclusion, the answer is almost always "the sample was not representative." Ask what changed about who got measured, not about what happened in the world.
Item 11 — Why did the student-notes questions feel harder than the reading passages?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"Does anyone remember What was the answer to the Eng M2 notes question where there was IIAC and they found like rocket art on something that was 17,000 years old?" — u/Wild_Acanthaceae_135
"the notes were hella hard and so easy to lose points. Like genuinely I have not seen notes as hard AND long like a frickin reading passage and I consistently score 750+ reading.😭" — u/Ecstatic_Fun879
What students argued. Almost nothing, because nobody could reconstruct the choices. u/Ecstatic_Fun879 remembered only his elimination: "Bruhh that was so hard i ended up guessing. I ruled out the answer choice that was about details" — which was the correct instinct. u/cloudyclairvoyance: "Oh yeah I was so confused but I picked D if you remember what that is". u/ae-wnnaslp: "I wasted so much time reading the last two and just give up". Three separate note sets came up: the Kimberley rock-art study, a presentism/"ersatz" philosophy set, and a Lazarus-species set at the very end of Module 1.
The transferable rule: read the goal sentence first, then read only the bullets that serve it, then pick the choice that does the named job. On notes items the wrong answers are usually factually accurate — they just answer a different question. And remember: notes items are not reading passages. You never need to understand the whole topic.
Item 12 — The island-territory grammar question: comma or no comma?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"for mod 2 grammar did anyone get a island territory one like among in the answer choice or smth" — u/Artistic-Ganache8652
"who got micronesia thing in grammar, I think it required comma but wasnt it?" — u/Direct_Bullfrog4294
What students argued. A real grammar debate, three against two. u/Artistic-Ganache8652 used the removal test: "i js like removed the extra info to see if the sentence still made sense which it did so i put the comma". u/Bookishnightmare argued the opposite from essential information: "the name is essential information in that question as the latter part is referring to the specific island in the name so no commas". u/Agitated-While-3863 simply reported "I did no commas".
The transferable rule: on every Boundaries item, ask one question — is there a subject and a verb on both sides? Period and semicolon need two independent clauses. If one side is only a phrase, the comma wins.
That clause test is one of a small set of rules that decide most Standard English Conventions items; our SAT grammar rules cheat sheet puts every one of them on a single page.
Item 13 — The second Shakespeare passage: what is Richard actually saying?
As students recalled it on Reddit:
"is collegeboard pulling old question formats?? like what is the old english vocab" — u/Unknowner_gg
What students argued. Nobody reconstructed this one item by item — it surfaces in the thread only as part of the broader shock at archaic English appearing twice in one section. It is included because the reasoning is the single most useful thing you can take from a dramatic-text item.
The transferable rule: in a soliloquy, the speaker is telling the truth to the audience and lying to everyone else on stage. Separate the two before you read the choices.
Which September Reading and Writing items could not be resolved?
Four items generated real discussion on Reddit and no usable answer. We are listing them as unresolved rather than guessing, with the reasoning that gets you there.
The renovation item: discretion, hesitancy, or resolve?
"old buildings renovation : discretion … i chose discretion because it said renovation is standardised for new buildings but not for old buildings" — u/Alarming-Let-7579
"I wrote hesitancy for the last one" then "yep I think discretion was correct tho 😭 I floated between those two at the last moment" — u/hiemelanie
Three answers, three students. Discretion is the defensible pick on the recalled context. If a procedure is standardised for new buildings but not for old ones, whoever handles the old ones has to decide case by case — and that freedom to judge is exactly what discretion names. "Hesitancy" adds reluctance the context never supplies; unstandardised does not mean nervous. "Resolve" means firm determination, a personality trait rather than a procedural gap. u/SomeOriginalIdea went with resolve and u/jdjsksmdndnd admitted "I didn't get the discretion question 🥺". Treat this as reasoned, not confirmed.
The market-capitalism item where "Ang" disagreed
"Market capitalism economy with two different researchers attributing growth to two different factors independently. What did yall put for the answer that weakens their claim or sm?" — u/Ecstatic_Fun879
"someone named Ang disagreeing, saying that one is not independent of the other" — u/swrol
u/Born-Act-595 framed the winning shape of answer: "you can't strictly say one theory vs the other theory; they aren't independent". u/swrol and u/CR-s1rius hedged toward a choice about consequences. The non-independence answer is the structurally correct kind of answer. When two researchers each credit growth to a separate factor independently, the cleanest way to weaken both at once is to show the factors are entangled — then neither study isolated its cause. A "consequences" option describes what happened after growth, and that cannot undercut a claim about what caused it.
The aluminium / volumetric capacity graph
"Did anyone get the question about AFL (think aluminum something) and like volumetric capacity vs normal materials? There was a graph" — u/swrol
Three students confirmed it existed. Nobody reconstructed the axes. u/AmoebaCritical9550 remembered a rising-as-temperature-falls shape; u/Artistic-Ganache8652 remembered a superlative claim. Those are two different shapes of answer, so no verdict is responsible here. The rule for quantitative-evidence items: the answer must be the one claim the graph literally supports at the exact point the sentence names. A superlative like "higher than all the others" is only correct if the graph shows it for every comparison — and a claim about a trend is only correct if the sentence is about a trend.
The ticker-tape transition: "for example" or "of course"?
"Did i guys get the ribbon one which was a transition question about ticker tape and how it changed" — u/Reasonable-Novel-567
"isn't it for example" — u/TurtleLife0 · "No, it should be of course" — u/cloudyclairvoyance
A clean two-person disagreement with no tiebreaker, and neither student reproduced the sentences. The decision rule: "for example" requires the sentence after the blank to be a specific instance of the sentence before it. "Of course" concedes something the reader already accepts, and it is almost always followed by a pivot. If the next sentence names a case of ticker tape changing, it is "for example." If it grants something obvious before a "but," it is "of course."
The full September 2026 SAT vocabulary list from the Reddit thread
Every word students mentioned in the thread, what it means, and the word they confused it with. Learn them in pairs — the pairs are the test.
| Word | What it means | Confused with |
|---|---|---|
| lament | to mourn or express sorrow over something lost | enumerate — the thread's single biggest argument |
| enumerate | to list things one by one | lament — you can enumerate names, not a "passing" |
| regret | to feel sorrow or disappointment about something | dispute |
| dispute | to argue against; to challenge the truth of | lament — but dispute needs an opponent |
| fair (archaic, sense 1) | honourable, morally decent | fair = impartial (the courtroom sense) |
| fair (archaic, sense 2) | pleasing to look at; attractive | ample, light |
| impartial | not favouring either side; unbiased | honourable — judging fairly is not behaving decently |
| ample | more than enough; plentiful | pleasing — paired with "fair" by sound, not sense |
| honourable / honorable | deserving respect; morally upright | satisfactory (much weaker praise) |
| pleasing | agreeable; attractive to look at or experience | lawful (no overlap at all) |
| satisfactory | acceptable; good enough | honourable — lukewarm versus high praise |
| byzantine | excessively complicated, tangled, hard to untangle | the Byzantine Empire — unrelated here |
| rudimentary | basic, undeveloped, at an early stage | byzantine — exact opposites |
| monotonous | dull through lack of variety; repetitive | byzantine — too samey versus too messy |
| fraudulent | done with intent to deceive | byzantine — complicated is not dishonest |
| enigmatic | puzzling; difficult to explain or understand | pragmatic, impulsive; also read as "only mysterious" |
| pragmatic | practical; dealing with things sensibly and realistically | enigmatic — the island-settlers trap |
| impulsive | acting on a sudden urge without thinking it through | enigmatic — describes them, not our view of them |
| ambivalent | having mixed or contradictory feelings | enigmatic — their feelings versus our confusion |
| populated | filled with living inhabitants | sanitized — the redundancy trap |
| sanitized | cleaned to remove germs or living organisms | populated — it would kill the microbes being added |
| precluded | prevented from happening; ruled out in advance | populated — similar shape, opposite job |
| estimated | roughly calculated or judged | measured |
| comprehensive | complete; covering everything | inadequate — flipped by "in the absence of" |
| inadequate | not good enough; insufficient | comprehensive — the polarity trap |
| interdependent | mutually reliant; each affecting the other | tenuous, unyielding |
| tenuous | weak, flimsy, barely holding together | interdependent |
| unyielding | not giving way; rigid | interdependent |
| vulnerable | easily harmed; exposed to damage | threatening — victim versus attacker |
| threatening | posing a danger to something else | vulnerable — the role-reversal trap |
| resistant | able to withstand something without harm | vulnerable — direct opposites |
| necessitating | making something necessary or unavoidable | obviating — near-opposites that look equally technical |
| obviating | making something unnecessary; removing the need | necessitating — the reversal trap |
| rescinding | cancelling or revoking an official rule or order | necessitating |
| extolling | praising enthusiastically | necessitating |
| recover | to get something back; to capture refrigerant out of a system | release — pulled by "venting" nearby |
| release | to let something out or set it free | recover — exact opposite of the regulation |
| shield | to protect from harm | recover |
| approximate | close to but not exactly accurate | uncontroversial |
| uncontroversial | widely accepted; not disputed | approximate |
| discretion | the freedom to decide using your own judgement | hesitancy, resolve |
| hesitancy | reluctance; slowness to act out of doubt | discretion — authority to choose versus unwillingness to |
| resolve | firm determination to do something | discretion — will versus judgement |
Five hard Reading and Writing questions from the same families, worked
The thread argued about vocabulary polarity, underlined-sentence function, and "no punctuation" grammar traps. Below are five hard items in exactly those families — the kind that decide whether a Module 2 score lands at 700 or 760. Try each one before you open the answer. If you miss two or more, the families you need are named after each solution.
1. Vocabulary with a polarity flip: "not ______ but anxiety"
Slow-cinema films such as Yang's A Brighter Summer Day and Apichatpong's Cemetery of Splendour have a measured pace. Apichatpong's statement that his slow-cinema films "put audiences to sleep" might suggest that his works are boring, but boredom does not always cause torpor: indeed, by creating tension in the absence of a place to fix attention, boredom induces not ______ but anxiety.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
- lethargy
- perturbation
- indifference
- endurance
Show the answer
A, lethargy. The sentence sets up a contrast: boredom "does not always cause torpor" and instead induces "not ______ but anxiety." The blank must be the thing the sentence is denying — the sleepy state (torpor) — so it needs a synonym for torpor, and that is lethargy. "Perturbation" is a synonym for anxiety, so it would sit on the wrong side of the "not…but" structure. Family: Words in Context with a negation frame; always find which side of "not X but Y" the blank is on before you look at the choices.
2. Vocabulary with an unfamiliar adjective: Manchester textiles
Because of its salience, economists often treat the clustering of textile manufacturing firms in Manchester, UK, as ______ industrial agglomeration generally, but Giulia Faggio et al. caution against this: while the existence of labor pools drives collocation in this specific industry, data show that in other industries—the musical instrument manufacturing industry, for instance—firms may locate near one another for a variety of reasons.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
- idiosyncratic within
- emphatic about
- paradigmatic of
- attenuated by
Show the answer
C, paradigmatic of. Economists treat Manchester as the model case for agglomeration "generally" — and Faggio's caution is that it is not representative, since other industries cluster for other reasons. "Paradigmatic of" means serving as the typical example of. "Idiosyncratic within" says the opposite (unusual, not typical), which would make the caution pointless. Family: Words in Context where the second half of the sentence tells you the polarity of the first.
3. Logical completion with a two-step argument: periodical studies
Gustav Frank and Madleen Podewski have observed that although serialized publication and a continuous publication cycle mark periodicals as quite distinct from other objects of literary analysis, the periodical is insufficiently theorized as a unique form, leaving scholars heavily reliant on methods of literary criticism developed for analyzing other types of texts, as well as methods arising from other fields entirely, such as communication studies. However, literary-critical methodologies in particular make assumptions about authorial control that to be tenable must be restricted to forms like novels, poems, and plays. Frank and Podewski thus caution that even as periodical studies has emerged as an independent discipline, it ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
- risks producing scholarship that fails to attend to the defining characteristics of the field's object of study.
- could be ill-equipped to identify the approaches within literary criticism that account for the ways in which periodicals differ from other literary forms.
- may fail to make valid claims about the social and historical contexts within which popular periodicals were created and disseminated.
- is in danger of being unable to justify continued scholarly attention to a literary form that is characterized mainly by its transience.
Show the answer
A. Chain the two claims: periodicals are distinct because of serialization, but scholars borrow literary-critical methods, and those methods assume authorial control that only fits novels, poems, and plays. So the risk is scholarship that ignores what makes periodicals periodicals — their "defining characteristics." B assumes literary criticism already has approaches that account for the difference, which the text denies. C and D introduce social context and transience, neither of which the passage discusses. Family: Inferences (logical completion) where the answer restates the passage's own premises, never adds a new one.
4. Standard English Conventions: when the answer is no punctuation at all
Karl Popper's argument that scientific hypotheses must be theoretically refutable, termed the criterion of falsifiability, rejects the confirmationist ______ verifiability as the essential criterion for scientific hypotheses. To Popper, a statement like "all cheetahs have spots" is scientific not because it can be verified, or proved true, but because it can theoretically be proved false.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
- argument, positing
- argument positing
- argument and posits
- argument, it posits
Show the answer
B, argument positing. "Positing verifiability as the essential criterion" is a restrictive participial phrase that identifies which confirmationist argument is being rejected, so it takes no comma. A comma before "positing" would make the phrase modify the whole clause (as if Popper's argument were doing the positing). C creates a compound verb with no subject that makes sense, and D is a comma splice. Family: restrictive versus nonrestrictive modifiers — if the phrase is needed to identify the noun, no comma.
5. Standard English Conventions: the supplement that has to close
Advocacy groups the Orden Hijos de América and El Teatro Campesino were founded on October 13, 1921, and September 26, 1965, respectively—two ______ given each group's commitment to advancing Latino rights, are important to US civil rights history.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
- dates that,
- dates that
- dates, that
- dates that—
Show the answer
A, dates that,. Look past the blank: "given each group's commitment to advancing Latino rights, are important…" The phrase "given each group's commitment…" is a nonessential interruption sitting between the relative pronoun "that" and its verb "are." An interruption needs a comma on both sides, and the second comma is already there after "rights." So the opening comma goes right after "that." B leaves the supplement half-open; C separates "that" from "dates," which it needs to modify; D opens a dash pair that never closes. Family: paired commas around a supplementary element — always check what punctuation is already sitting on the far side of the interruption.
What does the thread tell you about the September 2026 Reading and Writing section?
Comprehension got easier and vocabulary got harder. That is the one thing almost everyone agreed on. u/Happy_Inspection_826: "i think module 1 harder, module 2 easier than the aug one — module 1 vocab was harder". u/Hihikzz: "Significantly easier, vocab was quite harder with old english vocab in module 1, and weird ahh words like byzantine for module 2". u/Born-Act-595 on the long reading items compared with August: "Wayyy easier u have to trust me on this". The dissent came from u/jdjsksmdndnd: "It's harder especially the vocab questions" — which is the same observation, weighted differently.
Archaic English was the shock of the administration. Two Shakespeare passages in one section, plus a Virginia Woolf passage written in 1919, produced the thread's two hardest items. u/Unknowner_gg spoke for everyone: "is collegeboard pulling old question formats?? like what is the old english vocab". If you are preparing for a future international administration, budget real time for pre-1920 prose.
The student-notes block was the loudest complaint after "lament." Thirteen separate mentions. u/Ecstatic_Fun879, who says he consistently scores 750+ on Reading, called the notes longer and harder than a reading passage. u/Buyka_gansukh: "Last 2 notes question was bru". u/ae-wnnaslp gave up on them. The notes clustered at the end of the module, which is exactly where your remaining time is thinnest.
Students used the section shape to guess their adaptive branch. u/Spiritual_Guitar871 counted: "there were like 9 comprehension question and from 14 began the english convention questions". u/ContributionLucky697: "bro i got 4 bullet points questions in second module. did i get easy module😭 altho i got 4 vocab questions". u/mohammadZainIwamoto reported the confusing mix: "I got easy vocab easy grammar but hard inference". Remember that a recall thread blends both Module 2 forms, so "was this the hard one" rarely gets a clean answer.
Timing was tight at the end, not the start. Every timing complaint in the thread points at the final stretch — the notes items and the last vocabulary blank. u/cloudyclairvoyance: "Pretty tricky kinda lost time". u/hiemelanie changed a correct answer to a wrong one at the last second.
One non-content problem dominated test day. u/Hihikzz: "Probably worst sat ive ever taken, not because of the test itself but how it was handled. Bluebook in mac had technical difficulties and around 30% of students in my room got the issue." u/Agile_Confidence_747 put the figure at roughly 70% in his room. u/Hihikzz added: "Collegeboard said only mac".
The single highest-value habit the key exposes: read the sentence around the blank for its logic, not its topic. Nine of the thirteen resolved items were decided by one structural cue — "rather than," "in the absence of," "from our modern perspective," "sterilized," the object of the verb. In every case the vocabulary was the surface and the sentence logic was the test.
Retrieval practice
- What is the grammatical object of "lament" in the Woolf passage, and why does it kill "enumerate"?
- Which two senses of "fair" does Viola use in Twelfth Night, and how does "beauteous wall" tell you the second one?
- What does lowercase "byzantine" mean, and which three common words let you eliminate your way to it?
- Why does "from our modern perspective" force "enigmatic" over "pragmatic"?
- Why is "sanitized" impossible after the word "sterilized"?
- What does "in the absence of" do to the polarity of a blank?
- What is the difference between necessitating and obviating?
- On a notes question, what do you read first, and why are the wrong answers usually true?
- When do you use a semicolon instead of a comma before a phrase like "among them Niue"?
Practice the full September 2026 Reading and Writing set. The questions from the September 2026 administration are organized by domain in the September 2026 SAT Reading and Writing question bank. For other months, browse the Digital SAT question bank.
Practise the question families this thread argued about
New: October 3, 2026 International SAT recaps: vocabulary, reading questions, grammar and transitions, and the full Reddit discussion recap.
Where this sits
- The other half of this administration: September 2026 SAT Math answers, including the factoring item that split the thread.
- Why two students sat different Module 2s: Module 2a vs 2b: How the Digital SAT Adapts.
- Work the full official material: Digital SAT Practice Tests: The Complete Guide.
- Estimate your score before release: Digital SAT score calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does this September 2026 SAT Reading and Writing answers page cover?
Every Reading and Writing question test-takers recalled on Reddit after the September 12, 2026 international Digital SAT, the answers students fought over, and which one is actually right, plus the full vocabulary list. The official r/Sat discussion thread turned into a vocabulary argument within an hour of the last module ending.
Was the ticker-tape transition question "for example" or "of course"?
"Of course." The sentence after the blank concedes that the ticker machines had long been retired by the 1994 parade and then pivots to what replaced them. That is a concession-then-pivot pattern, not an example of the previous sentence.
What was the answer to the market-capitalism question about Ang?
The choice stating that meritocratic-hiring initiatives cannot be explained simply as either a precondition of capitalist growth or a consequence of it. Ang's whole point is that both theories assume a one-way cause, and the passage says neither phenomenon is independent of the other.
How do I practise the hard Reading and Writing families from this thread?
Work timed sets in the same families — polarity-flip vocabulary, underlined-sentence function, restrictive modifiers, and paired commas — rather than rereading recalled items. A Test Advantage subscription includes month-by-month question sets, Targeted Practice by skill, and an AI tutor that explains each miss; see the subscription plans page for current options.
What did "lament" mean on the September 2026 SAT?
Regret. The character laments "the passing of the great days," and a passing is a single event, not a list, so "enumerate" is impossible. Nine Reddit commenters backed regret and four backed enumerate; the majority is right.
What were the two underlined "fair"s in the Shakespeare question?
Honorable and pleasing. In Twelfth Night Viola praises the captain's "fair behaviour" (morally decent) and his "fair and outward character" (pleasing to look at). "Impartial, ample" is the modern-sense trap.
What does "byzantine" mean on the SAT?
Excessively complicated and tangled. It has nothing to do with the Byzantine Empire. In the September set it described century-old wiring modified repeatedly with no overall plan, and it was the word Reddit students most often admitted not knowing.
Was the answer "comprehensive" or "inadequate" on the cybersecurity question?
Comprehensive. The sentence begins "In the absence of," so the blank must hold the good thing whose absence causes the problem. Missing that phrase is what flipped students to "inadequate."
Why did students find the September 2026 SAT notes questions so hard?
They were long and clustered at the end of the module, where time is shortest. The fix is structural: read the goal sentence first, then pick the choice that does the named job. On notes items the wrong answers are usually factually true but answer a different question.
How reliable are Reddit SAT answer threads?
Useful for identifying which questions appeared, unreliable for the answers. On this thread the most-upvoted answer on one vocabulary item was wrong, and students misremembered proper nouns on two others. Treat recall as a list of question types to review, and verify every answer yourself.