Sentence Correction

Roland2rule wrote:Even though the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are not met by all their soldiers, the reserve battalions have enough acceptable soldiers that the hard-pressed generals on the front lines feel compelled to call them to battle.
A. the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are not met by all their soldiers
B. not all the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are met by their soldiers
C. all their soldiers do not meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship
D. all their soldiers do not meet health and marksmanship as normally required
E. not all their soldiers meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship

A and B: their soldiers
Here, their (plural) seems to refer to requirements (plural) or to health and marksmanship (also plural), but the intention is for their to refer to the reserve battalions.
Since the other answer choices avoid this ambiguity, eliminate A and B.

C and D: all their soldiers do not meet the...requirements...the reserve battalions have enough acceptable soldiers
Here, the portion in red seems to contradict the portion in blue.
The result is a distortion of the intended meaning.
The intended meaning of the original sentence is that NOT ALL the soldiers meet the requirements, implying that SOME soldiers DO meet the requirements and thus are acceptable.
Eliminate C and D.

The correct answer is E.

BTGmoderatorRO wrote:Even though the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are not met by all their soldiers, the reserve battalions have enough acceptable soldiers that the hard-pressed generals on the front lines feel compelled to call them to battle.
A. the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are not met by all their soldiers
B. not all the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are met by their soldiers
C. all their soldiers do not meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship
D. all their soldiers do not meet health and marksmanship as normally required
E. not all their soldiers meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship

OA is E
what is the best method to use here to get the correct answer? Please, I want experts to help me out.
Thanks a lot

This is a question testing the usage of Active vs Passive voice, and the split between not all and all..not. On the GMAT, given that we can discern the actor (soldiers) from the original prompt, we always want to prefer the active construction to the passive construction. Secondly, on the GMAT, all + not leads to ambiguity, and is always INCORRECT. To understand this, let us look at the following sentence:

All of the apples were not rotten.

From the above sentence, we probably want to say that some - say 6 out of 10 - apples were rotten, and others were fresh. However, the way the sentence is written, it can be interpreted to mean that None of the apples were rotten: in other words, the not could be construed as being associated with 'rotten'. Since the sentence can be read more than one way, this leads to ambiguity in the meaning, a cardinal sin on the GMAT.

Not all is a synonym for some and completely unambiguous. Therefore, on the GMAT, we should use either some/not all or None for unambiguous constructions.

A: the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are not met by all their soldiers - Passive and awkward
B: not all the normal requirements for health and marksmanship are met by their soldiers - same as A
C: all their soldiers do not meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship - all..not leads to ambiguity
D: all their soldiers do not meet health and marksmanship as normally required - same as C
E: not all their soldiers meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship - CORRECT. Not all is used correctly to indicate that some of the soldiers do not meet the normal requirements for health and marksmanship; The Active Voice is used to result in a more direct construction.

E is the most direct and least ambiguous construction, and is therefore the best answer.

Please let me know in case anything doesn't make sense.