SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 20 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

The following sentence has been divided into four segments. Identify the segment that contains an error in the usage of the interjection. He replied / in a dry tone, / “Ouch! I will not work / for you anymore.”

(a)in a dry tone,
(b)He replied
(c)for you anymore.”
(d)''Ouch! I will not work

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The stem names the error class: an error in the usage of the interjection. Only one of the four segments contains an interjection at all, so that is where the fault must be.

The interjection is Ouch!, which expresses sudden physical pain. Nothing in the sentence hurts anyone. The speaker is refusing work, and he does it in a dry tone.

An interjection has to match the feeling it announces, and a flat, dry refusal is not a cry of pain. Option (d) is the faulty segment.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
in a dry tone, — In a dry tone is ordinary English for an unemotional or sardonic manner, and it holds no interjection, so it cannot be the segment the stem asks about.
(b)
He replied — He replied is a plain subject and verb with nothing to correct, and no interjection appears in it.
(c)
for you anymore.” — For you anymore closes the refusal correctly, anymore being standard in a negative clause, and this segment carries no interjection either.

Concept

An interjection is a word thrown into a sentence to voice sudden feeling, set off by an exclamation mark or a comma: Ouch!, Alas!, Hurrah!, Oh!

This item is not asking whether the interjection is spelt or punctuated correctly. It asks whether the feeling the word names is the feeling the sentence describes.

So read the frame around the quotation before the quotation itself. Here replied in a dry tone fixes the mood before the speech even opens.

The response sheet prints option (d) with a double apostrophe where the paper shows an opening quotation mark. The words of the segment are unaffected.

Key facts

An interjection expresses sudden emotion and stands grammatically apart from the rest of the sentence.
Ouch expresses sudden physical pain.
Alas expresses grief or regret, and Hurrah expresses joy.
A dry tone means an unemotional, matter-of-fact or sardonic delivery.

Study next

Interjections matched to the feeling they carry: Alas, Bravo, Hurrah, Hush, OhPunctuating an interjection with an exclamation mark or with a commaSegment-based error spotting where the stem names the error class

Common traps

Hunting for a grammar mistake when the stem has already narrowed the error to the interjection
Suspecting in a dry tone, which sounds unusual but is ordinary English

Naming the error class in the stem shrinks the search to the one segment that carries an interjection. English Q.16 of this paper runs the open version, where any part may hold the error and it turns out to be a preposition.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.