Sentence Correction

Until the passage of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act in 1982, a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright infringers, while offenders were subject to relatively small penalties.
A. charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright
infringers, while offenders were
B. charge, with federal prosecutors who were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, offenders being
C. charge, federal prosecutors unlikely to pursue criminal copyright infringers, while
offenders were
D. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely in pursuing criminal
copyright infringers and offenders being
E. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, and offenders were
[spoiler]Answer:E[/spoiler]

IMO E. It is the only one that is concise and doesn't seem awkward.

Everything up to "charge" is an independent clause and should be separately appropriately; in this case, a semicolon can be used, eliminating A, B, and C. Logically, this also makes sense since it follows that federal prosecutors would be unlike to pursue infringers while the crime was still a misdemeanor. Between D and E, D uses a conjunction ("and") between an independent clause ("federal prosecutors...infringers" and a dependent clause ("offenders being...") with no comma. You're left with E, which changed the last part ("offenders were...") into another independent clause and connected it correctly.

gmat make up many strange sentence patterns which is hard to understand.So, we check grammar to quickly sort out the choices ungrammatical before the choices illogical

"offender being" in D as no coordinated element (because of "and")

check meaning logic

in A, "prosecutor being" is happening at the time of previous action "was". this is not logic.this pattern is call "absolute phrase".pls read more in grammar book.

in B, "with prosecutor..." means that this happen before previous action "was" . this is not logic

in C, the pattern " main clause, noun +adjective phrase or which clause" is used when noun refers to entire main clause. This is not logic. for example,

she is beautiful, a fact which I know----this is correct

patterns in A, B, C require us to understand the last modifying phrases

Before the law...it was a minor issue, THEREFORE feds didn't pursue the cases.

Down to D/E

D Is wrong for many reasons...
- being
- unlikely in pursuing ???


E --fixes those...

maihuna wrote:Until the passage of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act in 1982, a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright infringers, while offenders were subject to relatively small penalties.
A. charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright
infringers, while offenders were
B. charge, with federal prosecutors who were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, offenders being
C. charge, federal prosecutors unlikely to pursue criminal copyright infringers, while
offenders were
D. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely in pursuing criminal
copyright infringers and offenders being
E. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, and offenders were
[spoiler]Answer:E[/spoiler]

Can anyone please explain this one in more details>

lunarpower wrote:if you understand the basics of parallelism, you can actually solve this whole problem without using anything else.

keep in mind, though, that successful use of parallelism is not just mechanical; it also requires an understanding of the MEANING of the sentence.
some posters on this forum seem to treat sentences as if they were 100% mechanical objects. while that sort of approach is effective in a few instances -- such as evaluating subject-verb agreement -- it's far from sufficient to solve sentence correction problems in general. in order to ramp up your SC success to the next level, you have to pair an understanding of mechanics with an understanding of meaning.

in the case of parallelism:
if the sentence contains PARALLEL CONCEPTS -- i.e., concepts that describe the same sort of thing, in the same sort of way, at the same priority -- then those concepts should appear in parallel structures.
conversely, for concepts that are NOT parallel, you can't use parallelism as a process of elimination.

--

in this problem:
there are three historical statements:
1) a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor
2) federal prosecutors were unlikely to pursue infringers
3) offenders were subject to small penalties

note that, of these three statements, only #2 and #3 are PARALLEL CONCEPTS.
specifically, the first is an independent historical statement, while #2 and #3 are both CONSEQUENCES of that statement (consequences that are presented with equal priority).

therefore, the sentence should be written in a way such that #2 and #3 are parallel. since fact #1 is not conceptually parallel to anything in the sentence, we can ignore it in this analysis.

let's examine the parallelism of #2 and #3 in each answer choice:

maihuna wrote:A. charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright
infringers, while offenders were

not parallel.

B. charge, with federal prosecutors who were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, offenders being

not parallel.

C. charge, federal prosecutors (--no verb form--) unlikely to pursue criminal copyright infringers, while
offenders were

not parallel.

D. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely in pursuing criminal
copyright infringers and offenders being

not parallel.

E. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, and offenders were

parallel.

(e) wins.

Hey Ron....Thanks a heap for such a detailed analysis.....you rock!

I'd too marked E as the answer...
While making a final decision to mark an answer...I do trust my EAR..
but never thought of PARALLEL CONCEPTS... have to cultivate a habit of thinking on these lines...

Thanx a lot Ron, ur posts are enlightening.

It took me almost 2 minutes 30 seconds. However, good thing is that I got correct answer that is E

I easily eliminated A, B and D

A - being unlikely in pursuing - is not correct
B - being is not required, 'were' is good here
D - I don't think 'unlikely in pursuing' is correct. IMO 'unlikely to pursue' is correct. (Ron or any other expert please guide me)

I down to C and E, these both choices took me lot of time to decide on E

I eliminated C because of 'while'. Use while only when 2 simultaneous things are in progress

federal prosecutors unlikely to pursue criminal copyright infringers, and offenders were subject to relatively small penalties can not be ||el processes. Therefore, I eliminated C. - Ron or any other expert please let me know if I am correct

E wins

maihuna wrote:Until the passage of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act in 1982, a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright infringers, while offenders were subject to relatively small penalties.
A. charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright
infringers, while offenders were
B. charge, with federal prosecutors who were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, offenders being
C. charge, federal prosecutors unlikely to pursue criminal copyright infringers, while
offenders were
D. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely in pursuing criminal
copyright infringers and offenders being
E. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, and offenders were
[spoiler]Answer:E[/spoiler]

IMO E

Until the passage of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act in 1982, a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright infringers, while offenders were subject to relatively small penalties.

IMO this is a problem of run on sentence. A run on sentence occurs when 2 independent clauses(IC) are not joined appropriately.

IC1: Until the passage of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act in 1982, a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor charge, (Actually this is a dependent clause + Independent clause but relative to 2nd part of the sentance you can practically treat it as an IC)

IC2: federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright infringers, while offenders were subject to relatively small penalties.

Rule to join IC: Independent clauses may be joined by a [comma and a conjunction (and,but,or etc)], or by a semicolon, or by a dash.

The choices A,B,C are out straight away as they violate rule 1-joined by a [comma and a conjunction (and,but,or etc)]. Now we are left with choices D and E. If you choose option D the last part of the sentance will become "and offenders being subject to relatively small penalties" which is a sentence fragment. Remember 'being' in 'offenders being' is not acting as a verb. the -ing form of the verb always require a helping verb. The correct answer is 'E'.

Guru's, Please let me know if my analysis is wrong.

maihuna wrote:Until the passage of the Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act in 1982, a first-time charge of copyright infringement was merely a misdemeanor charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright infringers, while offenders were subject to relatively small penalties.
A. charge, federal prosecutors being unlikely in pursuing criminal copyright
infringers, while offenders were
B. charge, with federal prosecutors who were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, offenders being
C. charge, federal prosecutors unlikely to pursue criminal copyright infringers, while
offenders were
D. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely in pursuing criminal
copyright infringers and offenders being
E. charge; therefore, federal prosecutors were unlikely to pursue criminal copyright
infringers, and offenders were
[spoiler]Answer:E[/spoiler]

IMO E

can't be A & D Because it should be unlikely to pursue. being is redundant
can't be B because of unnecessary who and being is redundant
shortlisted choice C & E
Can't be C, as the verb for prosecutors is missing leading to uncomplete sentence,

so E

My trick is : Second clause is a "independent clause" So down to D& E.

"to pursue" is the correct idiom

Pick E