Sentence Correction

Last year Torville Toys sold 34,000 Quizmo Dolls, accounting for almost half of their total revenue, twice as much as 2005.

A.twice as much as 2005
B.twice as many as 2005
C.double what it was in 2005
D.double the figure for 2005
E.twice the number that was tallied in 2005

Please explain your selections. I have some doubt about the OA, and I will post the OA after some replies. Thanks.

A - as much as usage is wrong here. We are having countable nouns and many should be used
B - wrong comparison, we are comparing 34000 dolls with 2005
C - awkward, something is missing
E - too wordy though it seems fine.

IMO D.

thulsy wrote:Last year Torville Toys sold 34,000 Quizmo Dolls, accounting for almost half of their total revenue, twice as much as 2005.

A.twice as much as 2005
B.twice as many as 2005
C.double what it was in 2005
D.double the figure for 2005
E.twice the number that was tallied in 2005

Please explain your selections. I have some doubt about the OA, and I will post the OA after some replies. Thanks.

D - IMO "figure" could refer to either 34000 dolls or revenue"
C - IT does not have any referent than REVENUE

IMO C

thulsy wrote:Last year Torville Toys sold 34,000 Quizmo Dolls, accounting for almost half of their total revenue, twice as much as 2005.

A.twice as much as 2005
B.twice as many as 2005
C.double what it was in 2005
D.double the figure for 2005
E.twice the number that was tallied in 2005

Dolls are countable.
A- much is incorrect
B- as many as year[2005] is incorrect
C- it's antecedent is not clear.
D- Correct
E- wordy

+1 for C

patanjali.purpose wrote:

thulsy wrote:Last year Torville Toys sold 34,000 Quizmo Dolls, accounting for almost half of their total revenue, twice as much as 2005.

A.twice as much as 2005
B.twice as many as 2005
C.double what it was in 2005
D.double the figure for 2005
E.twice the number that was tallied in 2005

Please explain your selections. I have some doubt about the OA, and I will post the OA after some replies. Thanks.

D - IMO "figure" could refer to either 34000 dolls or revenue"
C - IT does not have any referent than REVENUE

IMO C

Thanks all for your reply. The OA is D, and here comes the official explanation:

If a quantity is countable, then the term "as many" should be used. "As much" is used when a quantity, such as an emotion or an attribute, cannot be counted. Since the Quizmo Dolls can be counted, "as many" is the proper term in this case.

Also, "as much as 2005" is improper. It should be "as many as in 2005" or "double the figure for 2005."

Last year Torville Toys sold 34,000 Quizmo Dolls, accounting for almost half of their total revenue, twice as much as 2005.

A. twice as much as 2005Choice A is not the correct answer. Since the number of dolls can be counted, the comparison should be "as many," rather than "as much." The prepositional phrase "as 2005" is also incorrect.

B.twice as many as 2005
Choice B is not the correct answer. "As many" is correct, but the prepositional phrase "as 2005" creates an illogical comparison.

C.double what it was in 2005
Choice C is not the correct answer. This sentence is wordy and awkward

D.double the figure for 2005
Choice D is the correct answer. The emphasis is placed on the number of dolls and "for 2005" is the correct structure of the comparison.

E.twice the number that was tallied in 2005
Choice E is not the correct answer. This is too wordy and awkward.


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My query:

I chose A because I was stuck with the original meaning of the sentence. There are two quantities:
1. 34000 Quizmo Dolls (this is countable)
2. half of their total revenue (the ratio - half - is uncountable)

From the original sentence (Choice A), I think the underlined part serves as an appositive noun modifier, which modifies the nearest quantity ("half"). Therefore, I construe the intended meaning as

Last year sold 34,000, accounting for almost 1/2 of their total revenue
in 2005, sold unknown #, accounting for almost 1/4 of their total revenue

Per my above understanding, "as much as" is justified, because the ratio "half" is uncountable.

For the OA-D, I doubt that "the figure" is ambiguous - it could refer to either 34,000 or "half". Also, if "double the figure for 2005" is a noun modifier modifying "34,000 Quizmo Dolls", I think it should be placed as close as possible to "34,000 Quizmo Dolls".

Can anyone shed light on this? Kindly correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

thulsy wrote:Last year Torville Toys sold 34,000 Quizmo Dolls, accounting for almost half of their total revenue, twice as much as 2005.

A.twice as much as 2005
B.twice as many as 2005
C.double what it was in 2005
D.double the figure for 2005
E.twice the number that was tallied in 2005

Please explain your selections. I have some doubt about the OA, and I will post the OA after some replies. Thanks.

accounting for almost half of their total revenue is a non-essential modifier and hence sentence would make EXACTLY same sense when this modifier is removed. After removing it, we can see that twice/double was intended for dolls and not revenue

Hope it is clear now

Hi vikram4689,
Thanks for your reply. I'm sorry but I still have the following considerations:

1. I think the part "accounting for almost half of their total revenue" is in the form of "comma + v-ing", which serves as an adverbial modifier that modifies the whole preceding clause, right? If so, I feel weird to have in Choice D:
Main clause, (adverbial modifier), (noun modifier for the noun in the Main Clause).
Here we have an adverbial modifier inserted in the middle to destroy the intactness of the sentence.

2. If the intended meaning was as I thought (in 2005 that ratio was almost 1/4), wouldn't we write the sentence exactly as Choice A?

Thanks all the same. Open to discussion

vikram4689 wrote:accounting for almost half of their total revenue is a non-essential modifier and hence sentence would make EXACTLY same sense when this modifier is removed. After removing it, we can see that twice/double was intended for dolls and not revenue

Hope it is clear now

Yes construction is awkward but there is no other way. "accounting..." has to come there only to show that sale of dolls accounted for ...

Now for the meaning you intended, one will use relative modifier and not comma after revenue. using a relative modifier would indicate that noun "revenue" was to be modified

lunarpower wrote: this problem is a direct rip-off of OG 11th edition problem #7. i'm not allowed to reproduce OG problems here, but, if you can get your hands on OG11, you shouldn't waste your time with this problem -- there's no value added here if you have the original.

Hi Ron, Thank you for your reply. I see your point on the modifier part.
Excuse me but I have found the OG11 problem #7 to be the following:

Carnivorous mammals can endure what would otherwise be lethal levels of body heat because they have a heat-exchange network which kept the brain from getting too hot.

I suspect that you were referring to a different problem...

lunarpower wrote:

vikram4689 wrote:accounting for almost half of their total revenue is a non-essential modifier and hence sentence would make EXACTLY same sense when this modifier is removed. After removing it, we can see that twice/double was intended for dolls and not revenue

Hope it is clear now

this is wrong, because it's possible for a modifier to modify another modifier.

for instance:
I ate lunch with Janice, who brought along Butch, her toy poodle.

this is a correct sentence. "who brought along Butch" is modifying Janice, and, in turn, the appositive ("her toy poodle") is modifying Butch. you can't remove just the part between the two commas, because the appositive is modifying that part -- if you kill that part, you have to kill the appositive too.

Sure, i agree that in I ate lunch with Janice, who brought along Butch, her toy poodle if we remove part between commas then we have to remove appositive as well. This is because if we only remove part between commas sentence DOES NOT makes sense, telling us that last part was intended to modify Butch

In original sentence, from the meaning, we can infer part between commas is just giving additional information. Moreover if we remove part between commas sentence still makes sense.