Mortgage payments

[kobel51]

In 1973 mortgage payments represented twenty-one percent of an average thirty-year-old male's income; and forty-four percent in 1984.

(A) income; and forty-four percent in 1984

(B) income; in 1984 the figure was forty-four percent

(C) income, and in 1984 forty-four percent

(D) income, forty-four percent in 1984 was the figure

(E) income that rose to forty-four percent in 1984

[Bill@VeritasPrep]

In choice A, using a semicolon with a conjunction is redundant. Either can be used to link independent clauses, but you don't need both. Additionally, we don't have an independent clause after the semicolon because we don't have a verb.

B is pretty good.

Similar to A, C needs a verb in the second clause.

D uses a comma on its own to join two independent clauses.

E combines the two different ideas into one clause, which is illogical and awkward.

B

[Patrick_GMATFix]

I go through the question in detail in the full solution below (taken from the GMATFix App).



-Patrick

[[email protected]]

Hi kobel51,

This SC is based on Comparison rules (and by extension, Parallelism rules).

The sentence compares percents in 1973 to percents in 1984; we need to choose an answer that presents that information in parallel format.

The first part of the comparison uses the phrase "In 1973....represented.....21%", so we need the second part of the comparison to match.

Only the correct answer B presents the second part of the comparison in the same format.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich