Sentence Correction

Hello GMATGuruNY,
In few of your posts you have mentioned that possessive+ gerund+ Direct Object is incorrect.

Can B and E in the following question be crossed out for the same reason?

It was only after Katharine Graham became publisher of The Washington Post in 1963 that it moved into the first rank of American newspapers, and it was under her command that the paper won high praise for its unrelenting reporting of the Watergate scandal.

A It was only after Katharine Graham became publisher of The Washington Post in 1963 that it moved into the first rank of American newspapers, and it was under her command that the paper won high praise

B It was only after Katharine Graham's becoming publisher of The Washington Post in 1963 that it moved into the first rank of American newspapers, and under her command it had won high praise

C Katharine Graham became publisher of The Washington Post in 1963 and only after that did it move into the first rank of American newspapers, having won high praise under her command

D Moving into the first rank of American newspapers only after Katharine Graham became its publisher in 1963, The Washington Post, winning high praise under her command

E Moving into the first rank of American newspapers only after Katharine Grahame's becoming its publisher in 1963, The Washington Post won high praise under her command
OA A.

Please note that this question has been discussed in almost all the forums but the possibility of eliminating these answer choices for the rule mentioned has not been discussed.
Since , i have seen your couple of posts on this topic, therefore your guidance in this regard will be of great importance for the members.

Thanks

Well, it seems as though he's not likely to answer any time soon, so I figure I'll give it a whirl.

Generally speaking, when we use 's it is to show possession. Accordingly, the relationship can be expressed using a form of the verb have.

John's car is blue = John has a car. The car is blue.
John's daughter is working = John has a daughter. She is working.

With that in mind, a sentence such as: "John's striving for excellence impressed his co-workers" doesn't make much sense, because we cannot say "John has a striving. The striving impressed his co-workers."

That said, I don't think we should be overly formulaic in our guidelines. For example, the sentence: "John's drinking buddy was arrested last night" is perfectly fine because we can easily say: John has a drinking buddy. The buddy was arrested last night.

Of course, one could easily argue that drinking isn't a gerund or that buddy isn't a direct object. I understand that. I just think that some students want to be able to boil sentence correction down to an algorithm that can be mindlessly executed and always get a perfect score. I don't think that can be done.