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wireless service

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by kaulnikhil » Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:18 am
Because of wireless service costs plummeting in the last year, and as mobile phones are increasingly common, many people now using their mobile phones to make calls across a wide region at night and on weekends, when numerous wireless companies provide unlimited airtime for a relatively small monthly fee.

A. Because of wireless service costs plummeting in the last year, and as mobile phones are increasingly common, many people

B. As the cost of wireless service plummeted in the last year and as mobile phones became increasingly common, many people

C. In the last year, with the cost of wireless service plummeting, and mobile phones have become increasingly common, there are many people

D. With the cost of wireless service plummeting in the last year and mobile phones becoming increasingly common, many people are

E. While the cost of wireless service has plummeted in the last year and mobile phones are increasingly common, many people are

[spoiler]Ron says :
'with' may be used with a present participle (-ING form) to represent circumstances that are contemporaneous with the action described in the main clause.

How are the two actions contemporaneous ?? one( cost of wireless service plummeting) happened last year and the other happens now(usage of telephones)
Refer the following link for details.
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pre ... t6871.html
[/spoiler]
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Source: — Sentence Correction |

by albatross86 » Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:47 am
"many people now using..." is grammatically incorrect as it lacks an auxiliary verb. This rules out A and B.

C. "with the cost plummeting, and mobile phones have become increasingly common,..." This is not parallel and putting an independent clause into the sentence like this is inappropriate.

D. "With ...plummeting...and ...becoming..." This is parallel and uses "with" appropriately.

E. This mixes past perfect and present tense, which is inappropriate. Also, "while" indicates a contradiction which changes the intended meaning.

Pick D.


As for the usage of "with". I really don't know about this whole "contemporaneous" issue. As far as I can see, you can break the sentence into "with the cost plummeting" and "with mobile phones becoming common". This is parallel and even though it may describe events that are occurring at different times, it synchronizes them grammatically by using the present participle "plummeting" - since there is no tense error, it is acceptable.

Anyhow you probably arrived at this choice D by elimination too, so I wouldn't bother with rather detailed grammar like the stuff Ron discussed in that post. He said it himself, focus on the "heavy hitters like parallelism".
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