First, you would use the distributive property to multiply -7 into the parenthesis. Then you’d have 8x-3.5x-49=14 Then you add 49 to both sides to combine like terms and get 8x-3.5x=63 Next you would combine like terms on the left side by subtracting 3.5x from 8x and end up with 4.5x=63 Then to get x by itself you would divide by 4.5 on both sides and end up with X=14 being your answer.