lunarpower wrote: 3 * if you have than/as + subject + FORM OF "TO DO" as the second half of a comparison, then you must have an ACTION VERB[/b] (or another form of "to do") in the first half of the comparison.

Hello Ron, following is a GMATPrep question:

To develop more accurate population forecasts, demographers would have to know a great deal more than they do now about the social and economic determinants of fertility.

So, we have "do" after "than", but do we have another ACTION VERB (or another form of "to do") in the first half of the comparison.

May be I am not very clear with grammar here.

Thanks Ron and trust me it is a heartfelt thanks for i have been trying to reach you since past some days. so thanks again for reverting back. Your replies always enlighten me.

Now i come to the point :

By #2, I mean things like the following:
Rebecca, a long-distance runner, regularly eats more in a single meal than I can in a whole day.
("can" goes with "eat")
If there's no other choice with "can", this is perfectly acceptable.

honestly up until now i used to consider above construction correct but after reading your "these rules" i had become stringent mainly because none of the official problem seems to violates your rules . so my take away from here is that i can think of the sentence as correct: Rebecca, a long-distance runner, regularly eats more in a single meal than I can in a whole day ; even though helping verb "CAN" goes with "EAT" and there is no "EAT" in the clause . i agree that there is "EATS"

Also, gmat62, those don't look like official problems. Are they official problems? If not, ignore them

no they are not from prep . i will ignore them for sure but please confirm if the correct answer is correct in them or is it outright wrong .there is a reason i am asking this . when i was talking my gmat last time SC choices were surprising me and and trust me RON it is not that my understanding of SC is poor .i have a good info base and by that i mean that i am familiar with most rules (parallelism , modifications ,comparisons , tenses etc) that can be used to kill answer choices in gmat . i fail to understand as why i was surprised with answer choices in real exam . these question similarly "surprised" me . so if i know that "these question" are out right wrong, which can only be confirmed by a person of your caliber, then please tell me so, so that i do not loose faith on my actual understanding

At the end of the day, just remember that this is a "beauty contest" among the given answer choices

i agree that "this exam" is about selecting best out of the worst but at times i get so unlucky, as i was while solving "these questions", that i tend to eliminate the correct answer the moment i see that it is not conforming to some "rules" . how do i overcome this?

Thanks

Guys ,

I am very much curious that why A is wrong the rest i got it.

Pls help me....

lunarpower wrote:[edited since first written]

in general,

1 * if you have than/as + subject + FORM OF "TO BE" as the second half of a comparison, then you must have another form of "to be" in the first half of the comparison.
or, there should be something in the first half that would make sense with "to be"in front of it.

I guess this(Dark red) is the edited add on..@Ron-Please cite an example to make the context of the edit more clear.

This is something unrelated to this topic..citing this from an MGMAT
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/sin ... 52-15.html

...first, you've got a "which" modifier that isn't preceded by a comma, so that's an automatic failure. (note that you can use preposition + which without a comma -- e.g., the box in which you placed your valuables -- but you cannot do so with just plain "which".)..
I think I have noticed official usages(My GMAT) of 'which' in the absence of a preceding preposition and without a comma preceding the which..Cant recollect those sentences..
1. Several farmers still use pesticides which were banned by the govt last decade.
Is this incorrect??..I think they call it restrictive modifier..

Double Post

lunarpower wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 30, 2010 4:24 am

[edited since first written]

2 * if you have than/as + subject + HELPING VERB as the second half of a comparison, you can have just about any other form of the same verb in the first part, as determined by context.


here are some examples:

#2
james can negotiate with salespeople more effectively than stephanie can. (comparing their abilities)
james can negotiate with salespeople more effectively than he does. (his ability exceeds his actual performance, probably because he just isn't trying very hard)

Dear Lunarpower,

Can you do me a favor by giving me an example regard #2, when the 'Helping Verb' is 'have' at the second half of a compariosn, and there is another form of the same verb in the first part.

I have been confusing about this issue for long time (I think a vivid example can help me understand this issue)

Regards,
Have a Good One!

Justin