Sentence Correction

Reptiles, by drawing their body heat directly from the Sun rather than burning calories to generate it, can survive on ten percent of the nourishment that a mammal of similar size would normally require.

(A) rather than burning calories to generate it

(B) rather than the generation of body heat by burning calories

(C) and not from generating it by burning calories

(D) instead of by burning calories for generating it

(E) instead of body heat generated by burning calories

Since different ways of generating body heat are contrasted, parallel structures must be maintained ("by drawing rather than [by] burning" OR "by drawing instead of [by] burning" would be ideal). The full solution below is taken from the GMATFix App.



-Patrick

Hey!
When will I know "by" is implied or not implied?
I choose "D", because "A" was missing "by".

Regards,
mukherjee

[email protected] wrote:Hey!
When will I know "by" is implied or not implied?
I choose "D", because "A" was missing "by".

Regards,
mukherjee

You might want to check this link out:

https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=instead+of

Instead of is traditionally considered a preposition. So, instead of by would be incorrect in formal contexts. That's one thing that makes choice D) wrong; the second part of it ("for...") is unidiomatic too. In choice A), by is optional. If you included it, that would be fine too.

Also,

By drawing...rather than [by] burning....

is more parallel than

By drawing...instead of burning....

because instead of cannot properly be followed by by. I don't think the second one is wrong, but the first one is definitely better.

D: instead of by burning
of = preposition.
by burning = modifier.
The object of a preposition must be a NOUN.
by burning (modifier) cannot serve as the object of of (preposition).
Eliminate D.

A key distinction between instead of and rather than:
While instead of must be followed by a noun, rather than can be followed by virtually any part of speech (noun, verb, modifier, etc).

There also is a difference in meaning.
For an explanation of this difference, check my post here:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/i-dont-have- ... 69313.html
In the SC above, instead of -- which means IN PLACE OF -- implies that reptiles are REPLACING one bodily process (burning) with another (drawing).
Not the intended meaning.