Fill in the blank with most appropriate option:
Hardly had she entered the room ___ the phone rang.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
Correct Answer
when
Explanation
The question tests the knowledge of correlative conjunctions and their specific structural pairs in English grammar.
The adverbial expressions "Hardly," "Scarcely," and "Barely" are used to show that one event happens immediately after another. In a sentence structure, these words are strictly paired with the conjunction "when" (or occasionally "before") to introduce the second action. Therefore, "Hardly had she entered the room when the phone rang" is grammatically correct, making Option 1 the right choice.
The other options are incorrect because they violate this fixed grammatical pairing:
than is a common trap because students confuse "Hardly" with "No sooner." The comparative expression No sooner is always paired with than (e.g., "No sooner had she entered than the phone rang").
then is an adverb of time, not a conjunction, and cannot be used to connect these two clauses.
while is used to indicate that two actions are happening simultaneously over a period of time, which contradicts the sequential nature of this sentence.
Key Points
This is a high-yield rule in competitive exams. Remember these two fixed formulas for structural transformation questions:
Hardly / Scarcely / Barely + Had + Subject + V3 + ... + WHEN + Subject + V2
No sooner + Had + Subject + V3 + ... + THAN + Subject + V2