Sentence Correction

99.Although the manager agreed to a more flexible work schedule, he said that it must be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor will know what everyone is assigned to do.
(A) he said that it must be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor will know what everyone is
(B) he said it had to be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor knows what everyone is
(C) he said that they would have to post the assignments on the bulletin board so that management and labor knew what everyone was
(D) he said that the schedule would have to be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor would know what everyone was
A [/spoiler]

I will certainly go with 'A'.

Choice B- Verb tense prob
Choice 'C' changes the meaning
Choice'D' same as 'C'

But where is choice 'E' ?

'A' would be the best choice among these.

Amit

A is the best among four...

B contains 'had' and tobe

C changes the original meaning

D is wordy and also uses tobe

can anyone please explain why D is wrong? When the manager was talking about future in past, shouldn't we be using "would"? Unlike C, the meaning of D seems to remain same to me. Please help.

Hi iWill

The question is nearly based on conditional sentences.

In all the options, first condition is defined and then result is expressed.

(A) he said that it must be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor will know what everyone is
This is 1st conditional form, in which, condition is mentioned in present tense and result is mentioned in future tense.
Correct structure. Hence it correct choice.

(D) he said that the schedule would have to be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor would know what everyone was
This option tries to formulate 3rd conditional form, in which condition should be mentioned in past perfect tense and result should be mentioned in "would/could have" form.

But in option (D), condition is mentioned in "would have" form and results in simple past tense. It is wrong structure.

We can do corrections in option (D) and IMO, correct structure would be:-
"he said that the schedule had to be posted on the bulletin board so that both management and labor would have known what everyone had"

To read more about conditional sentence structure, https://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/conditional3.htm.

Let me know your thoughts!!!

Thanks, that rule clears it easily!