Sentence Correction

Q. A Wall Street Journal report said that the ship, that departed from Long Beach on a seven-day voyage to the Mexican Riviera, is about 200 miles south of San Diego when a fire ignited in the engine room, cutting off power, telephone service and air conditioning

OA is
which departed from Long Beach on a seven-day voyage to the Mexican Riviera, was about 200 miles south of San Diego when a fire ignited in the engine room, cutting off power, telephone service and air conditioning

I selected A , here im confused at that v/s which . I can only correlated that '<comma> which ' are GMAT preference . Is '<comma> that' wrong?

or any other consideration ?

any expert reply?

any expert reply?

Eski,

There is a verb sequence error here. It says the ship is about 200 miles.... when a fire ignited.

Present and then Past tense. Seems illogical.

Should be past and past tense. In the OA that you have given that error has been rectified. Plus a punctuating modifier should not be used when using "that".

Say we remove the modifier - that departed from Long Beach on a seven-day voyage to the Mexican Riviera, the sentence still makes sense. So it isn't a restrictive clause. Hence the usage of that is unnecessary.

Essential modifiers use THAT without COMMA.
Non essential modifiers use WHICH with COMMA.

The problem with the original sentence is use of 'that' after comma, as the modifier (modifying ship) is non essential.
The other problem is the tense.

Great got clarity on this .

non-essential modifier comma

essential modifier non comma.


thanx ...