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by aditya8062 » Fri Oct 24, 2014 5:05 am
Aerugo, also known as verdigris, is the green "bloom" visible on many copper items, and is produced, like iron rust, over the course of time by the exposure of the metal to the oxygen in the atmosphere.
a) visible on many copper items, and is produced
b) that is visible on many copper items, and which produces
c) visible on many copper items, and produces
d) that is visible on many copper items, and that produces
e) which is visible on many copper items, and which is produced

my doubt: considering that "which" can be accepted without a comma, can option E be correct? is "which" in option E referring to "green "bloom" OR "Aerugo". i get a feeling that "which" can refer to "Aerugo"
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by iongmat » Sat Oct 25, 2014 5:36 am
aditya8062 wrote:Aerugo, also known as verdigris, is the green "bloom" visible on many copper items, and is produced, like iron rust, over the course of time by the exposure of the metal to the oxygen in the atmosphere.
a) visible on many copper items, and is produced
b) that is visible on many copper items, and which produces
c) visible on many copper items, and produces
d) that is visible on many copper items, and that produces
e) which is visible on many copper items, and which is produced

my doubt: considering that "which" can be accepted without a comma, can option E be correct? is "which" in option E referring to "green "bloom" OR "Aerugo". i get a feeling that "which" can refer to "Aerugo"
"which" cannot appear without a preceding comma, when "which" is used as a classical "relative pronoun" (except obviously when "which" appears as part of a prepositional phrase).

Nevertheless, here, it doesn't matter because of the structure of the sentence:

Aerugo is the green "bloom" which is visible on many copper items..

Because of "is", the structure of the sentence is:

X IS Y, which is visible on many copper items...

So, X=Y. Hence, whether "which" refers to X or to Y, it's the same thing.

"Technically" speaking however, "which" would refer to green "bloom".
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by aditya8062 » Sat Oct 25, 2014 8:06 am
"which" cannot appear without a preceding comma, when "which" is used as a classical "relative pronoun" (except obviously when "which" appears as part of a prepositional phrase).
this rule has been flouted by gmac. GMAC has stopped making this distinction now
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by iongmat » Sat Oct 25, 2014 8:46 am
aditya8062 wrote:
"which" cannot appear without a preceding comma, when "which" is used as a classical "relative pronoun" (except obviously when "which" appears as part of a prepositional phrase).
this rule has been flouted by gmac. GMAC has stopped making this distinction now
Thanks for this. Wasn't aware of this:(.

Can you kindly highlight an official example in this regard that will make things clearer for me.
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by [email protected] » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:49 am
Hi aditya8062,

In answer E, neither appearance of the word "which" is necessary - they're both redundant, since we already know the subject of the sentence.

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by aditya8062 » Sat Oct 25, 2014 9:12 pm
In answer E, neither appearance of the word "which" is necessary - they're both redundant, since we already know the subject of the sentence.

So you mean that the sentence would have been ok without "which"?
without "which" the sentence would appear as: Aerugo, also known as verdigris, is the green "bloom" is visible on many copper items, and is produced
------------->this is a wrong sentence
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by iongmat » Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:25 am
aditya8062 wrote: So you mean that the sentence would have been ok without "which"?
without "which" the sentence would appear as: Aerugo, also known as verdigris, is the green "bloom" is visible on many copper items, and is produced
------------->this is a wrong sentence
Hi! I believe what Rich meant was that the "which structure" is not needed. So I believe the sentence that Rich was suggesting is:

Aerugo, also known as verdigris, is the green "bloom" visible on many copper items, and produced....

Also, I had requested in my earlier post if you could let me know of any official example were "which" used as a classical relative pronoun does not have a comma preceding it. If you could let me know, it will help me clarify my concepts.
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by aditya8062 » Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:44 am
Also, I had requested in my earlier post if you could let me know of any official example were "which" used as a classical relative pronoun does not have a comma preceding it. If you could let me know, it will help me clarify my concepts.
oh missed your post. read question 10 OG 12 . also recently a friend of mine took gmat and he reported that he saw question in which all options were with "which" without comma . i had asked this thing to mitch and he said we can accept "which" without "comma". also he selected an option (another question) in which "which" was used without comma !! all other options were too wrong
now days GMAC has been making question to flout so called proclaimed rules (such as this one) which people normally use to eliminate options !!
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by aditya8062 » Sun Oct 26, 2014 4:50 am
hmm you people have been eliminating E but the point is that meaning parallelism of E is much better than A

the concept of parallelism is NOT RANDOM . we always need independent ideas to be parallel but then those independent ideas must be such that ---that we can represent those ideas as 1 AND 2 OR as A and B .apply this concept and u will see that meaning parallelism of E is much better than A( i am assuming that we need to forget about this "which" rule for a time being as GMAC itself has been flouting this rule in real exam)
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by iongmat » Sun Oct 26, 2014 6:28 am
aditya8062 wrote: oh missed your post. read question 10 OG 12
Hi! Question 10 OG 12 uses "that" (and not "which") in the right option. In fact, "that" (an "essential" modifier) should always be without comma. So, perhaps this does not give us the correct picture.
aditya8062 wrote: . also recently a friend of mine took gmat and he reported that he saw question in which all options were with "which" without comma
Well, as I mentioned earlier, it might be that the options used "which" as a part of "prepositional phrase", in which case there would obviously be no comma. For example: This is the bucket in which water was filled.
aditya8062 wrote: . i had asked this thing to mitch and he said we can accept "which" without "comma". also he selected an option (another question) in which "which" was used without comma !! all other options were too wrong
Can you please (if at all you have time, else don't bother) dig out that question. If it's an official question, it would settle things for me:).
aditya8062 wrote: now days GMAC has been making question to flout so called proclaimed rules (such as this one) which people normally use to eliminate options !!
Not at all! This is not a "self-proclaimed rule". In question 12, OG13 GMAT does hint at this:

Some writers follow the convention that which can only be used for nonrestrictive clauses, but insistence on this rule is controversial.

Since GMAT admits to this being controversial, I was under the impression (and still continue to be frankly) that GMAT would not have a correct option where a comma is missing before "which".
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by iongmat » Sun Oct 26, 2014 6:32 am
aditya8062 wrote:hmm you people have been eliminating E but the point is that meaning parallelism of E is much better than A

the concept of parallelism is NOT RANDOM . we always need independent ideas to be parallel but then those independent ideas must be such that ---that we can represent those ideas as 1 AND 2 OR as A and B .apply this concept and u will see that meaning parallelism of E is much better than A( i am assuming that we need to forget about this "which" rule for a time being as GMAC itself has been flouting this rule in real exam)
Hi! what I (and I believe Rich also) is proposing is:

the green "bloom" visible .... and produced ...

What A is saying is:

the green "bloom" visible .... and is produced ...

A is definitely incorrect.

So, basically, I am proposing option F:).
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by aditya8062 » Sun Oct 26, 2014 7:09 am
What A is saying is:

the green "bloom" visible .... and is produced ...
your interpretation is not correct


A says: Aerugo, also known as verdigris, is the green "bloom" visible on many copper items, and is produced, like iron rust, over the course of time by the exposure of the metal to the oxygen in the atmosphere. ----> by default parallelism is between the bold portion (and that is why i am saying that this default parallelism is not correct)

Not at all! This is not a "self-proclaimed rule". In question 12, OG13 GMAT does hint at this:

Some writers follow the convention that which can only be used for nonrestrictive clauses, but insistence on this rule is controversial.

Since GMAT admits to this being controversial, I was under the impression (and still continue to be frankly) that GMAT would not have a correct option where a comma is missing before "which".
this is where GMAT is playing around. same is true for the usage of "being" . the fact is that gmat has been changing lot of stuff and has been playing around especially with so called rules that are famous in these forums. and NO my friend did not see that exception (in fact i and he are aware of that exception !!)
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by chetan86 » Sun Oct 26, 2014 7:26 am
what is OA?
Is it A?

What is the source of this question?
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by iongmat » Sun Oct 26, 2014 7:38 am
aditya8062 wrote: your interpretation is not correct
Oh yes you are right, I missed that. But now I am confused why you say that E is better than A. I read your post on parallelism, but am not clear on how E is more parallel than A.
this is where GMAT is playing around. same is true for the usage of "being" . the fact is that gmat has been changing lot of stuff and has been playing around especially with so called rules that are famous in these forums. and NO my friend did not see that exception (in fact i and he are aware of that exception !!)
Not sure if I can say anything more than I have already said. Frankly if "all" the answer choices had "which" without a comma, then its a moot point. I quoted OG earlier to demonstrate that this is not "so called rules that are famous in these forums".
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by aditya8062 » Sun Oct 26, 2014 7:57 am
Oh yes you are right, I missed that. But now I am confused why you say that E is better than A. I read your post on parallelism, but am not clear on how E is more parallel than A.
i never said that E is more parallel than A . i said that E has a better parallelism than A. there is a difference between "better parallelism" and "more parallelism" you just cannot make any ideas parallel . this is what i meant when i said that parallelism is not random .

the reason E has better parallelism than A is that E firstly defines something and then then gives 2 properties of that thing in parallel.
A, on the other hand, makes the "defining" and "property" as parallel !! (not good)
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