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Parallelism- Usage of that

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Parallelism- Usage of that

by qwerty12321 » Mon Aug 11, 2014 10:19 am
The health commissioner said that the government had implemented strict measures to eradicate the contaminated food and, despite the recent illnesses, [that] it would try to prevent the outbreak from recurring in the future.

In this statement is the usage of "that" necessary?
Can't "that" be counted across parallel elements?

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by [email protected] » Mon Aug 11, 2014 7:30 pm
Hi qwerty12321,

When I first read this sentence, I considered the idea of "redundancy" (does the sentence really need a second "that"?). Since the health commissioner is presenting 2 ideas though, we must follow Parallelism rules. Since the word "that" introduces the first idea, the extra "that" is required (to introduce the second idea).

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by David@GMATPrepNow » Tue Aug 12, 2014 5:44 am
Hi qwerty12321,

Yes, we need to keep the second "that" because of parallelism. Even though the sentence is a long one, and it seems like better writing to remove any unnecessary elements (it IS better writing to remove any unnecessary elements!), the second "that" is necessary.

In cases like this, try to quickly simplify the sentence down as much as possible to help see what is necessary and what isn't. For example:

The commissioner said that the government had done something and, [that] it would try to do something else.


It's a little easier now to see that the second "that" has to stay because of the first "that."

Keep up the good work qwerty12321.
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