Concision - Adjective over a clause.

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In December of 1987 an automobile manufacturer pleaded no contest to criminal charges of odometer tampering and agreed to pay more than $16 million in civil damages for cars that were test-driven with their odometers disconnected.

[A] cars that were test-driven with their odometers disconnected.

cars that it had test-driven with their disconnected odometers.

[C] its cars having been test-driven with disconnected odometers.

[D] having test-driven cars with their odometers disconnected.

[E] having cars that were test-driven with disconnected odometers.


The given OA is D.









Explanation:

The options B and C get cancelled out for a wrong use of the pronoun 'it' and 'its' with no antecedent at all.

Option A: Cars that were test driven does not give a clear meaning. It can also be that the cars that do not belong to the manufacturer, are without the odometers.

Option D vs E: This is where concision steps in.

the cars that were test driven - uses a 'that clause' to modify the things.

the test driven cars - is also a modifier

but Option D is more concise as the same meaning is conveyed by using lesser words.

An adjective form is preferred to a noun clause or a that clause. But not in cases of place and measurement.

This is specifically a concision question...

Hope this helps.
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by Jim@StratusPrep » Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:34 am
For questions like this I like to stop reading the sentence after key words and see what the meaning of the sentence is at that point. If you stop after cars in answer E you can see how the reader might get confused.
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