1000 SC #162

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montz: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 30; Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 10:50 am; Thanked: 1 times; GMAT Score:700

by montz » Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:41 am

Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinating them with her narratives, capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world.

(A) Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinating them with her narratives,
(B) In her book illustrations, carefully coordinating them with her narratives, Beatrix Potter
(C) In her book illustrations, which she carefully coordinated with her narratives, Beatrix Potter
(D) Carefully coordinated with her narratives, Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations
(E) Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinated them with her narratives and

Answer is C.
What is wrong with A? 'them' refers to book illustrations, doesn't it?

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:41 am

800GMAT: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 174; Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2007 5:51 am; Thanked: 1 times

by 800GMAT » Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:10 am

This is a OG11 question-102

subject(Beatrix Potter) and verb(capitalized) are too far away--OG prefers the subject and the verb to be as close as possible

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mayonnai5e: Legendary Member; Posts: 1018; Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:19 pmFollowed by: 6 members; Thanked: 86 times

Re: the solution

by mayonnai5e » Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:10 am

san.ceo wrote:the title of the book is illustrations, but it does not mean it is plural ........ so 'them' cannot refer to the 'title of the book' which is not a plural word

Got it !

"illustrations" is not the title of the book. If it were the title would need to be enclosed in parentheses or underlined. If my memory serves me correctly, magazine titles and articles must be quoted and book titles must be underlined. That was a lonnng time ago when I learned that though so things may have changed.

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mayonnai5e: Legendary Member; Posts: 1018; Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:19 pmFollowed by: 6 members; Thanked: 86 times

Re: 1000 SC #162

by mayonnai5e » Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:44 am

montz wrote:Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinating them with her narratives, capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world.

(A) Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinating them with her narratives,
(B) In her book illustrations, carefully coordinating them with her narratives, Beatrix Potter
(C) In her book illustrations, which she carefully coordinated with her narratives, Beatrix Potter
(D) Carefully coordinated with her narratives, Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations
(E) Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinated them with her narratives and

Answer is C.
What is wrong with A? 'them' refers to book illustrations, doesn't it?

A is wrong because of the verb tense. Remove the middle modifiers --> "Beatrix Potter capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world." The sentence must be in the past.
B is also wrong for the same reason.
D is wrong because the fragment "Carefully coordinated with her narratives, Beatrix Potter" suggests Beatrix is the object being coordinated with her narratives.
E is incorrect because them has no clear referent. What are the things being coordinated? "In her book illustrations" modifies Beatrix Potter and thus cannot be a subject and referent for "them." In addition, E subtly changes the meaning by breaking the sentence into two conjunctions. The second half no longer suggests the author capitalized on her keen observations in her book illustrations.

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mayonnai5e: Legendary Member; Posts: 1018; Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:19 pmFollowed by: 6 members; Thanked: 86 times

by mayonnai5e » Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:46 am

Just to make the last point on choice E clear:

Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinated them with her narratives and capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world.

1) Beatrix Potter, in her book illustrations, carefully coordinated them with her narratives.
2) Beatrix Potter capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world. --> This sentence is stand alone and no longer has any relationship to the first.

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montz: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 30; Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 10:50 am; Thanked: 1 times; GMAT Score:700

by montz » Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:46 am

@mayonnai5e

A is wrong because of the verb tense. Remove the middle modifiers --> "Beatrix Potter capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world." The sentence must be in the past.

A is not wrong because of the verb tense. 'coordinating' in the modifier part and 'capitalized' (past tense) are correct. OG 11 marks option A as incorrect because the modifying elements leave the subject too far from the verb.. :roll:

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mayonnai5e: Legendary Member; Posts: 1018; Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:19 pmFollowed by: 6 members; Thanked: 86 times

by mayonnai5e » Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:12 pm

Just because the OG explanation does not cite that specific error as being the main reason for exclusion does not mean it is correct. There are usually several errors in an incorrect answer choice and the OG explanation often only cites 1 of them when explaining why a particular choice is wrong. Take the correct answer C for example and try changing the verb:

Original C answer:
In her book illustrations, which she carefully coordinated with her narratives, Beatrix Potter, capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world.

C with verb tense change:
In her book illustrations, which she carefully coordinating with her narratives, Beatrix Potter, capitalized on her keen observation and love of the natural world.

The latter with verb change is wrong even though the modifier/subject/verb distance problem is fixed.

The first error I noticed was the verb tense error so I used that in eliminating. Had I picked the error that the OG explanation decided to focus on, I could have eliminated A for that reason.

So the lesson learned is: find the easiest error for you and work off that error to eliminate.

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[email protected]: Legendary Member; Posts: 934; Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2010 5:16 amFollowed by: 14 members; Location: AAMCHI MUMBAI LOCAL; Thanked: 63 times

by [email protected] » Fri Jan 06, 2012 10:29 am

Guyzzz!!!! this is a typical modifier sum so no need to associate any other error to it.
It comes down to options B and C in the end. Option B goes wrong as however best you try, this sentence cannot be written by having two modifiers as it needs a subordinator to explain both the modifiers. Hence this was also a case of optimal Modifier as Ron had explained in his explanation for optimal Parrallelism.

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pinchharmonic: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 51; Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2011 4:51 pm; Thanked: 2 times

by pinchharmonic » Fri Jan 13, 2012 12:17 am

Amit,

can you tell where Ron talks about multiple modifiers and using a subordinate clause with them?

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ArunangsuSahu: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 382; Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:47 pm; Thanked: 15 times

by ArunangsuSahu » Fri Jan 13, 2012 4:51 pm

(C)

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