Cut-paper design, a popular pastime of Colonial women, became an art form in the hands of Abigail Lefferts Lloyd, a Revolutionary War heroine.
[A] design, a popular pastime of colonial women, became an art form in the hands of
design, a popular Colonial women's pastime, and it became an art form in the hands of
[C] design was a popular pastime for Colonial women, then it became an art form in the hands of
[D] design is a popular pastime of Colonial women that has become an art form by
[E] design, the popular Colonial pastime, became an art form for
The OA is given as A.
I came down to the options A and C, and chose C because of its simplicity. But proved to be wrong...
Help needed please...
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Pronoun - Antecedent Case!!!
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[email protected]
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Remember, when eliminating answer choices you always want to make sure you can provide a grammatical reason for the elimination if possible. I'll note that "simplicity" is almost always a red herring on sentence correction problems and can be a tempting trap if you're not careful. When you chose C, you should have been wary of the fact that you didn't have a solid reason to eliminate A, and this should have prompted you to look more closely at the answer choices. The biggest problem with C is that it introduces a new independent clause after the first comma, which is unacceptable without an "and" or some other coordinating conjunction after the comma. I'm curious as to what basis you had for eliminating E as a viable choice by the way?
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Brent@GMATPrepNow
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[email protected] wrote:
Cut-paper design, a popular pastime of Colonial women, became an art form in the hands of Abigail Lefferts Lloyd, a Revolutionary War heroine.
[A] design, a popular pastime of colonial women, became an art form in the hands of
design, a popular Colonial women's pastime, and it became an art form in the hands of
[C] design was a popular pastime for Colonial women, then it became an art form in the hands of
[D] design is a popular pastime of Colonial women that has become an art form by
[E] design, the popular Colonial pastime, became an art form for
The OA is given as A.
(A) design, a popular pastime of colonial women, became an art form in the hands of
Looks good, keep for now.
(B) design, a popular Colonial women's pastime, and it became an art form in the hands of
Here, the comma and conjunction "and" are meant to separate to independent clauses. The second part ( it became an art form in the hands of Abigail Lefferts Lloyd, a Revolutionary War heroine.) is an independent clause (with verb and subject). However, the first part (Cut-paper design, a popular Colonial women's pastime) is not an independent clause, since it's missing a verb.
Eliminate B.
(C) design was a popular pastime for Colonial women, then it became an art form in the hands of
Here we have two independent clauses. We need to separate independent clauses with either a coordinating conjunction (and, but, etc.) and comma or a semicolon.
Since C fails to separate the independent clauses appropriately, we'll eliminate it.
(D) design is a popular pastime of Colonial women that has become an art form by
A few problems here. "has become" is a change in tense that alters the meaning of the sentence. Also, has become an art form by is unidiomatic.
Eliminate D.
(E) design, the popular Colonial pastime, became an art form for
First, Cut-paper design, the popular Colonial pastime changes the intended meaning. It suggests that cut-paper design was the one and only pastime. Also, became an art form for is unidiomatic.
Eliminate E.
Answer = A
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Brent
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Brent@GMATPrepNow
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I'd place this at the 500-600 level.Carcass wrote:can I know the level of this question ??
Thanks
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Brent
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savvysatyam
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The answer is A. Since there is a comma after design and women, the statement " a popular....women" is a non-essential clause and it is correctly placed. Even if we remove that still art paper form will refer to cut-paper design. Thus there is nothing wrong with the orignal sentence.
I hope it helps. Please correct me Brent, if my approach was wrong
I hope it helps. Please correct me Brent, if my approach was wrong
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You're correct in that the phrase "a popular pastime of Colonial women" is an appositive phrase that modifies/describes "design." As such, we can ignore it as we check out the remainder of the sentence.savvysatyam wrote:The answer is A. Since there is a comma after design and women, the statement " a popular....women" is a non-essential clause and it is correctly placed. Even if we remove that still art paper form will refer to cut-paper design. Thus there is nothing wrong with the orignal sentence.
I hope it helps. Please correct me Brent, if my approach was wrong
However, just because the original sentence appears to be correct, I recommend that you still check the answer choices. There are 2 reasons for this:
1) You may have missed a subtle error in the original sentence, and the remaining answer choices may help to expose that error
2) In some cases, there are 2 answer choices that are grammatically correct, in which case the BEST answer is typically the one that is more concise. As such, you need to check the remaining answer choices.
Cheers,
Brent
Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com
