Not only did the systematic clearing of forests

sjd00d wrote:I had picked A to begin with. Seeing the posts, realized that there's a tense issue there. D was my 2nd best choice and now that it is the OA, it makes more sense to me.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a sentence such as:

Event X does some good stuff, but it also does something not-so-good.

Stuart Kovinsky wrote:

netigen wrote:Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also caused erosion and very quickly deforested whole regions.

A. Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also

B. Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast), which gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also

C. The systematic clearing of forests in the United States, creating farmland (especially in the Northeast) and giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also

D. The systematic clearing of forests in the United States created farmland
(especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also

E. The systematic clearing of forests in the United States not only created farmland (especially in the Northeast), giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it

The GMAT loves to test the "not only... but also" construction. Whenever half of this construction appears, the other half will as well.

So, we can quickly eliminate (c), (d) and (e).

(a) has a verb tense problem: "create... and gave..." are not parallel, yet they should be. i.e., the sentence should read "create...and give...".

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of (b) either. For the sentence to be truly parallel, there should be an "it" after the comma.

A better version would have been:

"The systematic clearing of forests in the United States not only created farmland (especially in the Northeast), giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also"

Also, if (e) ended with "but also" instead of "but it", it would be perfect.

What's the source of this question?

netigen wrote:Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also caused erosion and very quickly deforested whole regions.

A. Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also (I think correct choice)

B. Not only did the systematic clearing of forests in the United States create farmland (especially in the Northeast), which gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also

C. The systematic clearing of forests in the United States, creating farmland (especially in the Northeast) and giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but also (verb missing)

D. The systematic clearing of forests in the United States created farmland
(especially in the Northeast) and gave consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it also

E. The systematic clearing of forests in the United States not only created farmland (especially in the Northeast), giving consumers relatively inexpensive houses and furniture, but it