Sentence Correction

Jim@Grockit wrote:Also, frustratingly, some of the things that are wrong on the GMAT are 100% grammatically correct -- they are marked wrong for reasons of style or concision.

i don't recall seeing official problems that are wrong *only* for reasons of style and/or concision -- certainly not style. no way they'd do that, unless your "style" category includes correct idioms.
it's true, though, that many answers that are also incorrect for other reasons are also peppered with occasional instances of wordiness or bad style, most probably as a sop to verbally talented individuals who are good at recognizing the Gestalt of correct/incorrect writing, while not necessarily able to explain the exact reasons for that correctness/incorrectness.

this post misses the most important issue, however, which is that at least 99% of "grammatically correct, idiomatically correct, but wrong" answers on the GMAT will be wrong because they have the wrong MEANING: the sentence either (a) is ambiguous or (b) doesn't say what it's intended to say.

i don't mean this response as anything personal -- it's just doubly important to point out on a forum such as this one, on which the vast majority of posters are a bit too concerned with extremely minute points of grammar, while nowhere near concerned enough with what the sentences actually mean.

kiran77 wrote:Any help on my queries will be greatly appreciated. My queries are:

(1) Unlike "which"(non-essential), which only modifies the previous word,

"which" can do that, but it is also well documented that "which" can modify the previous noun + prepositional phrase.

does the gerund(verb+ing) only modifies the entire clause before it?

i think you are confusing "gerund" with "participle". (if an -ING is a gerund, it actually doesn't modify anything at all, since gerunds function as nouns; -INGs that modify things are participles, not gerunds.)
in any case, such nomenclature is not the point; as long as you realize that an -ING is functioning as a modifier, it really doesn't matter whether you know what it is called.

anyway, to answer your question --
there are two completely different classes of -ING modifiers:

class 1)
-ING modifiers without commas
-ING modifiers that follow an initial subject (not a clause)
these usually modify the preceding NOUN, although there are some (rare) exceptions.
e.g.
leon, holding a new trophy, bragged about his team's victory in the most recent tournament.
--> modifies "leon"
students taking this quarter's physics lab classes must report to my office at 4:00 p.m.
--> modifies "students"

class 2)
CLAUSE + comma + -ING
here's a full description of these:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pos ... tml#p46255
(i don't usually cross-post from other forums, but that's a looooooooong post)

Does "which" has to always preced by a comma?

if it's BY ITSELF, yes -- in no-comma situations, you'd replace the "which" with "that".

on the other hand, if it's part of a prepositional construction ("in which", "from which", etc), then, no; you can use such constructions with or without commas.
for instance, the box in which i dropped the letter is now gone is a perfectly legitimate sentence, even though it contains no commas.

kiran77 wrote:(2) I fall in the traps(considering the parallelism concept), while the correct sentence intially uses verb+ed/plane verbs and later uses the gerund and viceversa. How can I deal with such sentences? What should be my approach?

i think you're making two confusions here:
1) i think you're confusing past-tense verbs with past participles;
2) i think (actually, i know) that you're confusing gerunds with -ING participles, as i pointed out above.

in any case, can you cite some examples here?
are you talking about the "lina's sunbird" problem, or about the "mushroom filigree" problem?
if so, then, you are definitely making the confusion that i pointed out in point #1; both of those problems contain parallelism between a past participle (NOT a past tense verb) and an -ING participle (not a gerund).

any instance in which a genuine past-tense verb (as opposed to a past participle) were placed in parallel with an -ING construction would definitely be incorrect.

(3)When to use verb+ing, verb+ed and to infinitive? This quetstion may be generic rather than specific but as a non native
speaker of english, I am not that successful in choosing the correct one when it matters. This is my major pit fall in SC and hurting my hit rate in SC's.

well ... as you may have suspected, this is one of those questions that cannot be answered succinctly in a paragraph or two; any "short answer" that you might receive is definitely going to be misleading/incorrect in a great number of cases.

in any case:

* INFINITIVE vs. -ING, unless it's part of a parallel construction, is usually going to be a matter of idiom or meaning -- unfortunately, you're just going to have to memorize these instances one by one, in the appropriate context.

* "verb-ed" depends on whether it's a past participle or a past-tense verb, though i suspect that, in most cases in which you're going to have trouble with it, it's going to be a past participle.
in general, "past participle vs. -ING participle" is a matter of whether you are talking about the passive voice (in which the subject is the recipient, or target, of the action) or the active voice (in which the subject is the agent, or doer, of the action). the past participle is used in the former case, while the -ING participle is used in the latter case.
for instance,
a governor who was intending to reduce crime --> correct
a governor who was intended to reduce crime --> incorrect
(not a grammar issue -- the point is that the governor has the intention to reduce crime, so we need to use an active-voice construction in this case)
a law that was intending to reduce crime --> incorrect
a law that was intended to reduce crime --> correct
in this case we definitely need the passive voice (past participle) construction, since it's impossible for a law to have intentions; someone else must have had these intentions in creating the law.

if i had to guess, i would hypothesize that the reason you are having such intense trouble with these issues is that they generally aren't grammar issues -- they're usually issues of meaning. if you approach them with a strictly grammatical approach, you're just going to wind up guessing.

(a) Even after through googling and R&D, I am still not good to decide/in deciding which one to use?
I feel that I have to use in deciding(still not sure and correct me if I am wrong).
If I have to use to decide, how the sentence be corrected?

examples?

this is probably an idiom issue. if it's an idiom issue, it's going to be impossible to answer this question without the specific context of the sentence.
(in general, most questions outside a specific context are pretty risky.)

(b) A recent poll indicates that many people in the United States hold a combination of conservative and liberal political reviews; i.e., they denounce big government, saying government is doing too much and has become too powerful, while at the same time supporting many specific government programs for health care, education, and the environment.

The above statement is 100% correct. However, The below statems is wrong(because of run-on structures)? However, Do we have to use only gerunds with this statement? Can't we use simple verbs to make the sentence seamless?

they denounce big government, say government is doing too much and it has become too powerful, while they support at the same time

here are some much shorter examples to make the point more clear.

i want to dance, wave my arms, and shout --> correct (3 verbs in sequence)

i want to dance, waving my arms, while shouting --> correct (simple sentence + 2 green modifiers)

i want to dance, wave my arms, while shouting --> incorrect (run-on sentence that tries to have 2 main verbs, without a series construction. note that you can ignore the modifier, from a grammatical standpoint.)

(4)Does the presence of comma(,) make any difference to the statement meaning while using gerunds?

given your previous questions, i think it's safe to assume that "gerunds" here refers to -ing participles rather than actual gerunds. in that case, i've answered this question 2 posts up.

mohish wrote:

lunarpower wrote:
"which" can do that, but it is also well documented that "which" can modify the previous noun + prepositional phrase.

Hi Ron!! Can you kindly quote any example from OG (current or past or supplement) that does this.

Thanks in anticipation.

for instance, og12 #26