Firstly, most GMAT sentence correction problems avoid usage of being. "Being" is passive and usually makes the sentence unnecessary wordy.

That being (oops did i say being) said, there are sentence where a sentence with the usage of being can be correct. Sentence correction problems don't require us to correct the sentence, they require us to find the best possible answer out of the alternatives given.

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.


A. Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear. - Heavy Commitment, can a commitment be heavy?
B. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.
C. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.
D. Executives' being heavily committed to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes them likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting them when they do appear.
E. Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

Though this sentence is passive in construction, it is the best among the given options.

'Being' used as a verb is a big no- no in GMAT Land but 'Being' used as a participle phrase is accepted.
I am not going to address all the options since Mohit has clearly articulated the mistakes in the answer choices. I am going to focus upon E and show how it fits the rule.
Being heavily committed is a modifier modifying the noun- executive.
'Being' here takes the form of present participle, Thus is accepted. Had' Being' taken the form of a verb, this would have been eliminated and a better worded sentence would have been picked up.

Hope this helps!

Can someone discuss more examples to differentiate the correct and wrong usage of 'being'?

Thanks

Great question, and a few thoughts to help you out.

1) I'd be insanely leery of any snake-oil tips like "being is always wrong" (or I had a student this weekend tell me that "if a CR answer choice reads like a comparison it's definitely wrong". What?). If a tip is too gimmicky, GMAC has a responsibility to create correct answer choices that violate that too-good-to-be-true tip. You have to think on this test - these tricks to game the system just aren't reliable.

2) "Being" is a present-tense verb (or participle). So it's used correctly to denote a temporary situation:

"While being sworn in as President, Barack Obama wore a watch given to him by his maternal grandmother." That's fine - "while being" sets up a temporary timeline during which something took place.

"My boss is being a real jerk today." This, too, is fine - it's temporary. My boss (who may read this later...) is a great guy! But certain days... So "being" denotes a temporary condition.

Now, if a temporary condition isn't the logical meaning, then "being" is incorrect:

"Being the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong remains an icon of scientific excellence."

That's wrong - he's not "being" the first man to walk on the moon. He just is. You'd say "As the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong..." to note that it's more his "essence".

So one proper use of "being" is to set up a temporary action or timeframe. Another is to use it as a noun (human being, living being, celestial being). Another, still is as part of a predicate as a state of being:

"I'm tired of being treated like a child."
"Don't hate me for being beautiful."

___________________________________________________________

Now, as a present-tense form of the popular verb "to be", "being" has a ton of uses. So it's tough (I'd venture impossible...) to learn them all or to list them all here. So my tip: Know its most popular incorrect usages to use those as elimination points:

-Used as an improper modifier (suggesting a temporary state instead of the logical permanent state)
-Used as an improper verb tense
-Etc.

And for other uses, look for other decision points in that sentence and come back to "being" when you can't find any other reason to eliminate choices. Having been used so often as a "trick" by test-takers, "being" is bound to exist in at least a few questions now as the "bait" - the trap to trick you into just blindly eliminating an answer based on the presence of "being" without looking at the other decision points. So if you can't concretely eliminate "being", I'd leave it alone for a second and look for something else, something more tangible.


3) Stacey had a good article on this a couple weeks ago: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/07/ ... ways-wrong That's worth including in this thread to add some more...


Thanks for asking the question - great discussion!

Brilliant Brian

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:Great question, and a few thoughts to help you out.

1) I'd be insanely leery of any snake-oil tips like "being is always wrong" (or I had a student this weekend tell me that "if a CR answer choice reads like a comparison it's definitely wrong". What?). If a tip is too gimmicky, GMAC has a responsibility to create correct answer choices that violate that too-good-to-be-true tip. You have to think on this test - these tricks to game the system just aren't reliable.

2) "Being" is a present-tense verb (or participle). So it's used correctly to denote a temporary situation:

"While being sworn in as President, Barack Obama wore a watch given to him by his maternal grandmother." That's fine - "while being" sets up a temporary timeline during which something took place.

"My boss is being a real jerk today." This, too, is fine - it's temporary. My boss (who may read this later...) is a great guy! But certain days... So "being" denotes a temporary condition.

Now, if a temporary condition isn't the logical meaning, then "being" is incorrect:

"Being the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong remains an icon of scientific excellence."

That's wrong - he's not "being" the first man to walk on the moon. He just is. You'd say "As the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong..." to note that it's more his "essence".

So one proper use of "being" is to set up a temporary action or timeframe. Another is to use it as a noun (human being, living being, celestial being). Another, still is as part of a predicate as a state of being:

"I'm tired of being treated like a child."
"Don't hate me for being beautiful."

___________________________________________________________

Now, as a present-tense form of the popular verb "to be", "being" has a ton of uses. So it's tough (I'd venture impossible...) to learn them all or to list them all here. So my tip: Know its most popular incorrect usages to use those as elimination points:

-Used as an improper modifier (suggesting a temporary state instead of the logical permanent state)
-Used as an improper verb tense
-Etc.

And for other uses, look for other decision points in that sentence and come back to "being" when you can't find any other reason to eliminate choices. Having been used so often as a "trick" by test-takers, "being" is bound to exist in at least a few questions now as the "bait" - the trap to trick you into just blindly eliminating an answer based on the presence of "being" without looking at the other decision points. So if you can't concretely eliminate "being", I'd leave it alone for a second and look for something else, something more tangible.


3) Stacey had a good article on this a couple weeks ago: https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/07/ ... ways-wrong That's worth including in this thread to add some more...


Thanks for asking the question - great discussion!