Select the correct prepositional phrase for expressing responsibility:

'The factory was held accountable ______ the chemical spillage into the municipal river.'

Answer and explanation

Correct answer: A. for

  1. Step 1: In formal legal and academic English, an entity is 'held accountable for' an action or failure.
  2. Step 2: 'Accountable for' specifies responsibility for a specific wrongdoing or outcome.
Answer
for.
Why not the others: 'with' does not pair with 'accountable'; 'to' expresses accountability to an authority figure ('accountable to the board'), not the deed; 'at' is ungrammatical.

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