OG Containing Own SC Mistakes in non-SC Sections?

[francoimps]

Quantitative Review, 2nd Ed, #154 of Data Sufficiency:

"A survey of employers found that during 1993 employment costs rose 3.5 percent, where employment costs consist of salary cost and fringe benefit costs..."

Doesn't the sentence contain a modifier error? Shouldn't it be, "..3.5 percent, in which employment costs..?"

I've been seeing a lot of similar SC errors (usually with respect to modifiers) in other sections (CR, RC, and Quant). Can someone shed light on this?

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Hi fancoimps,

Your SC skills are clearly strong (or getting stronger), since you're spotting these grammar errors in the non-SC sections of the OG. In non-SC prompts, the GMAT sometimes uses "conversational"-English (you'll see this on Test Day too). It's not done with any malice - it's just to make the instructions and questions a little easier to read. Since most English-speakers don't typically speak in a grammatically-accurate fashion, it also makes the GMAT a bit less sophisticated of an exam for the general Test Taker.

It can certainly make the process of learning English grammar a bit more difficult, but it's all a standard part of the Exam, so you have to work around these minor grammar issues.

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

[francoimps]

Hi fancoimps,

Your SC skills are clearly strong (or getting stronger), since you're spotting these grammar errors in the non-SC sections of the OG. In non-SC prompts, the GMAT sometimes uses "conversational"-English (you'll see this on Test Day too). It's not done with any malice - it's just to make the instructions and questions a little easier to read. Since most English-speakers don't typically speak in a grammatically-accurate fashion, it also makes the GMAT a bit less sophisticated of an exam for the general Test Taker.

It can certainly make the process of learning English grammar a bit more difficult, but it's all a standard part of the Exam, so you have to work around these minor grammar issues.

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

Oh! Thank you for the reply, Rich. I needed this.

I was actually starting to doubt already whether the SC rules i've learned through the GMAT prep companies were inaccurate or were missing out on important exceptions/nuances to certain rules.

Thanks once again.

Franco