The correct answer is D:
Spain is a beautiful country; the beaches are warm, sandy and spotlessly clean.
Explanation:To determine the correctly punctuated sentence, we need to analyze the punctuation marks used in each option.
Option A:
Spain is a beautiful country; the beache's are warm, sandy and spotlessly clean.
- The punctuation mark used after "country" is a semicolon (;), which is incorrect. A semicolon is used to separate closely related independent clauses. In this sentence, "the beache's are warm, sandy and spotlessly clean" is not an independent clause.
- The word "beache's" is also misspelled. It should be "beaches."
Option B:
Spain is a beautiful country: the beaches are warm, sandy and spotlessly clean.
- The punctuation mark used after "country" is a colon (:), which is incorrect. A colon is typically used to introduce a list or an explanation. In this sentence, it doesn't serve that purpose.
- The colon should be replaced with a semicolon or a period.
Option C:
Spain is a beautiful country, the beaches are warm, sandy and spotlessly clean.
- The punctuation mark used after "country" is a comma (,), which is incorrect. A comma is not strong enough to separate two independent clauses.
- A comma should be replaced with a semicolon or a period.
Option D:
Spain is a beautiful country; the beaches are warm, sandy and spotlessly clean.
- The punctuation mark used after "country" is a semicolon (;), which is correct. It effectively separates the two independent clauses.
- The sentence is correctly punctuated, with each clause expressing a complete thought.
Therefore, option D is the correctly punctuated sentence.