1000SC Question No 399

[samyak]

399. In spite of federal subsidizing of public transportation systems massively and major local efforts to persuade the public to use public transportation, mass transit has been steadily losing patronage to the private automobile for the past thirty years.
(A) In spite of federal subsidizing of public transportation systems massively and major local efforts to persuade
(B) In spite of massive federal subsidizing of public transportation systems and major efforts locally at persuading
(C) Despite massive federal subsidies to public transportation systems and the making of major efforts locally to persuade
(D) Despite massive federal subsidies to public transportation systems and major local efforts to persuade
(E) Despite massive federal subsidies to public transportation systems and making major local efforts at persuading

Any rule for where to use in spite of & where to use despite.
Please also explain why D is the best option.

[loveusonu]

399. In spite of federal subsidizing of public transportation systems massively and major local efforts to persuade the public to use public transportation, mass transit has been steadily losing patronage to the private automobile for the past thirty years.
(A) In spite of federal subsidizing of public transportation systems massively and major local efforts to persuade
(B) In spite of massive federal subsidizing of public transportation systems and major efforts locally at persuading
(C) Despite massive federal subsidies to public transportation systems and the making of major efforts locally to persuade
(D) Despite massive federal subsidies to public transportation systems and major local efforts to persuade
(E) Despite massive federal subsidies to public transportation systems and making major local efforts at persuading

Any rule for where to use in spite of & where to use despite.
Please also explain why D is the best option.

Samyak,

D is best option because of parallelism and correct (adverb+adjective\verb) structure. All other options contain error:
Parallelism is: massive federal subsidies to X ..and major local efforts to Y

All other options lack this parallelism.

Also A & B can be rejected NOT because of difference between Inspite & despite but due to below reasons:
1.Lack of parallelism as explained above
2.use of massively\locally at the end of phrases. Though this is not everytime incorrect but less preferable than to use massive\local.

for eg:
I drank the water from the resources locally. -->Less preferable
I drank the water from the local resources. -->Nice structure to go for.

Hope that helps!

[Shumit]

That sounds like a good explanation. I also think it sounds right in some strange way to use despite instead of inspite. Thanks Sonu for the explanation. Makes much more sense now