Sentence Correction

Ron, pls, help why we need a verb here

FYI guys, this problem is, more or less, a direct rip-off of #57 from the 10th edition OG (if any of you have such old editions lying around).

one thing:

I would say B, to eliminate all passive voice.

guys, the passive voice is not always wrong. there are in fact plenty of situations in which it is not only acceptable, but required by context.

this is one such context: "BY earthquakes" indicates that the passive voice is necessary.

by the way, "the extent of the shift of tectonic plates" ... not good, for at least two reasons.

more importantly, (1) "the shift of ..." isn't idiomatically correct with "BY earthquakes".
if you have "BY earthquakes", then there are two idiomatically acceptable constructions of which i know:
* the shiftING of plates by earthquakes
* ... plates are shifted by earthquakes (normal passive voice)

less importantly, (2) you don't want two "of" phrases in a row. this is just ugly.

I read the book "10 lessons in style", the book said that we should use verb not a group of nouns, in which nouns are connected by many prepositions. use of verb is vigorous and direct. use of group of nouns is abstract and is called nominalization.

Ok, we will not study outside thing. Lets focus on gmat.

we should use a verb not 2 of-phase as Ron said.

this matter appear in the question "irrigation and application of fertilizer is required..." a question in OG10

Ron, pls, give us an advice, simple, but effective, on this problem so that next time we can solve this question fast

Ron, pls help

why "noun by noun" is wrong and "doing by noun" is right

Ron, Stacey, Stuart, pls, help

guys, if you are looking for really simple rules governing questions of style, you are going to be disappointed. in general, style is a very complicated and nuanced issue.

one thing i've noticed, though, is that you DON'T want to REPEAT prepositions, helping words, etc., unless you're doing so as part of a parallel construction.
for instance, "the extent of the shift of..." is considered awkward and undesirable.

note that problems will actually go out of their way to avoid such situations. for instance, look at the following thread:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/australian-e ... 18654.html
the correct answer to that problem uses "evidence to suggest...", which is <i>far</i> less common than "evidence that suggests..."
(note that both of them are grammatically ok)
the only reason they're doing that is to avoid the undesirable repetition of "that". if you pick (a), you have "evidence that suggests that...", and that's ugly again.

in PARALLEL CONSTRUCTIONS, however, repeated prepositions or "that"s are totally ok. for instance,
the reason is not so much that NOUN1 VERB1 as that NOUN2 VERB2
and
there were ants on the counters and on the shelves
are totally ok, since they are parallel constructions.