In order to be punctuated correctly, how must the sentence above be rewritten?

My mother promised, "As long as you complete your homework; you can go to the game."

A. My mother promised! "As long as you complete your homework. You can go to the game."

B. My mother promised, "As long as you complete your homework, you can go to the game."

C.

D. This sentence is punctuated correctly and does not need to be rewritten.

In order to answer this question correctly, we must first understand how to punctuate dialogue.

Dialogue is always set off by quotation marks. A comma should appear after the word "said." Consider this example: Bobby said, "This is my house." Note that a comma appears after the word "said." Quotation marks are used to set off the words spoken by Bobby. Finally, a period appears at the end of the sentence (which is also the end of the sentence).

Now, let's look at the above example: My mother promised, "As long as you complete your homework; you can go to the game."

A comma correctly appears after the word "promised" (which is acting like the word "said"). Furthermore, quotation marks correctly set off the dialogue, and a period appears at the end of the sentence. All looks well.

But what about that semicolon? A semicolon is used to separate two complete sentences (or two independent clauses). Now, consider: are the two halves of dialogue complete sentences?

"You can go to the game" is a complete thought. On the other hand ...

"As long as you complete your homework" is NOT a complete thought and could not stand alone as a sentence. As a result, the semicolon is not correct here.

The proper punctuation for this sentence, then, would be:

My mother promised, "As long as you complete your homework, you can go to the game."

Therefore, the correct answer to this question is B.