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Harry Potter

by GmatKiss » Thu May 03, 2012 5:42 am
By the year 2008, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings' gripping book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print, making it more than that of almost any other British book ever written.

A) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print, making it more than
B) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print, which is more than
C) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, had around 400 million copies in print, more than
D) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, had around 400 million copies in print, making it more than
E) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print and is more than

IMO: C
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by ihatemaths » Thu May 03, 2012 7:20 am
B is it correct what is the OA ?
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by ice_rush » Thu May 03, 2012 8:17 am
(C) for me, but would like to know what's wrong with (E).
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by patanjali.purpose » Sat May 05, 2012 4:35 am
GmatKiss wrote:By the year 2008, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowlings' gripping book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print, making it more than that of almost any other British book ever written.

A) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print, making it more than
B) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print, which is more than
C) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, had around 400 million copies in print, more than
D) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, had around 400 million copies in print, making it more than
E) book series portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort had around 400 million copies in print and is more than

IMO: C
A - IT has no antecedent; The VERBING "MAKING IT...MORE THAN" modifies SERIES HAD AROUND..COPIES IN PRINT. It means "400m copies of series made the series more than copies of other books" - in appropriate comparison

B - IS (present tense - changes the original meaning); IS (singular) implies CLAUSE AFTER COMMAS (WHICH...WRITTEN) refering to PRINT.

D - same problem as A (+ inappropriate use of COMMA before HAD)

E- SERIES ..HAD 400M COPIES AND IS MORE THAN THAT OF ..(2 key problems: IS should hv been ARE; elements connected by AND are not parallel elemenets).

IMO C
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by ice_rush » Sat May 05, 2012 5:19 am
agreed (E) can be ruled out on the basis of parallelism, but not sure about replacing 'is' with 'are'. AND is incorrectly used in this sentence.
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by patanjali.purpose » Sat May 05, 2012 5:41 am
ice_rush wrote:agreed (E) can be ruled out on the basis of parallelism, but not sure about replacing 'is' with 'are'. AND is incorrectly used in this sentence.
..Book series {portraying a young wizard's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort} had around 400 million copies in print and is [more than that of almost any other British book ever written].

Our simple sentence is: Book series had around 400 million copies in print AND is more than XX. We can rewite this as: Book series had around 400 million copies in print AND {Book series} is more than XX.

We are talking about 2 things: (1) series has ~400m copies; (2) Series is more than something. Do you think (1) and (2) talk about same category of things about SERIES?

About whether use of IS is right - I now feel IS is better as we are talking about ONE SERIES
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by elementary » Sat May 05, 2012 9:57 am
Simple way to eliminate 3 options: the subject is 'Harry Potter' and the main verb is 'had', so there should be a comma after the subject and another comma before the main verb (parenthetical commas are used to bracket modifiers).
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by ice_rush » Sat May 05, 2012 10:12 am
That's what i mentioned earlier - the use of 'are' would be incorrect.

We can easily remove the sentence within commas - the main skeleton of the sentence then reads: Harry Potter....had around 400 million copies in print....more than that of almost any other british book ... So what I initially wrote about AND still holds true.

how can series be more than something? but sure, printed copies can be.
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