Your company had the following results for the year ending December 31. Income Tax Expense $7,437, Cost of Goods Sold $58,888, Sales $103,438, and Operating Expenses $19,894. Further, your company paid its office rent on December 31 of this year. The rent is $5,214 and covers January of next year. Calculate your company's net income for this year. (round to the nearest dollar and do not enter dollar sign or comma. e.g. enter $43,291.91 as 43292)

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The correct answer is A. Replacing “scalpel” with the nearby synonym “blade”

Explanation:

In texts, it is common to encounter unfamiliar or unknown words and these can be understood by using different strategies such as determining the meaning of a word based on the prefixes or suffixes that are part of it, using context clues provided by the words that surround the unknown word and even replacing the word by a familiar word if it provided.

In the case of the excerpt presented the unknown word is "scalpel" and this word is part of the section "She took up a scalpel and slit the monkey's abdomen, making a slow and gentle cut, keeping the blade well away from her gloved fingers", in this sentence the word "scalpel" is used to describe the object to cut the monkey's abdomen in the first sentence but then it is replaced by the word "blade" in the second sentence.

This means the excerpt provides the word "blade" which is a more familiar sentence to understand the unknown word "scalpel" and because of this the most helpful and simple way for knowing the meaning of scalpel is "replacing “scalpel” with the nearby synonym “blade” that is provided in the text and has a similar meaning to the unknown word.