Sentence Correction

This question is testing PRONOUN AGREEMENT, PARALLELISM, and IDIOMS.

Especially in the early years, new entrepreneurs may need to find resourceful ways, like renting temporary office space or using answering services, that make their company seem large and more firmly established than they may actually be.

- the idiomatic phrase "find ways..." should be completed with "... to do something..."

- because we have "and" before "more firmly established," we want a PARALLEL construction: "larger and more firmly established."

- the "they" outside of the underlined portion clearly should refer to the companies, but in the given sentence, "company" is singular. That would make "they" refer back to "entrepreneurs," which is nonsensical.


(A) that make their company seem large
- eliminate for the reasons outlined above

(B) to make their companies seem larger
- this fixes all 3 issues

(C) thus making their companies seem larger
- this fixes the pronoun and parallelism issues, but not the idiom issue: "need to find ways... thus making..." is not correct.

(D) so that the companies seem larger
- this also fixes the pronoun and parallelism issues, but not the idiom issue: "need to find ways... so that..." has a slightly different cause-effect structure, and thus a different meaning.

(E) of making their company seem large
- same pronoun issue and parallelism issue as the original

The answer is B.