By 1914, ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote

I got this wrong and selected D over E. Could someone explain why my reasoning is incorrect.

I believe the use of HAD is incorrect in E because HAD does not function as a pronoun. We would need to say "only one in the East had granted women".

In D, however, did can act as a pronoun for verbs hence "in the East only one state did [had granted women the right to vote]". Why is this wrong and E correct?

When we look out for the parallel structure that is required here we can easily arrive at the right answer. The structure needed here is X had granted … but only one in Y had.

This sentence uses the concept of ellipsis. By not repeating the words granted women the right to vote at the end of the sentence, the sentence elides this using the parallel structure.

This is how we can eliminate Options A, B, C, and D in one go.
Hope this helps!

E is clearly correct due to parallelism and meaning context. A, B, C can be eliminated for either wrong meaning or clunkier construction

ERROR ANALYSIS -

1) Case of parallelism around 'but' - only one in the east did/had (Note that tenses don't matter in parallelism)

ANSWER CHOICE ANALYSIS -

A) should end with did/had
B) Same as A
C) should not start with 'in the east'
D) Same as C
E) Correct

There’s a comma before BUT, so why should we go for parallelism and why not consider the part after COMMA BUT to be an Independent Clause ? So why would the answer not be C ?

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Using concept of ellipsis why option A is wrong? Does it not convey the intended meaning?

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CrackverbalGMAT AndrewN MartyMurray EducationAisle

I have the same doubt as above.

Hello, shanks2020. First off, I noticed you tagged me on another question regarding ellipsis. I will respond here for both. I would urge you not to create rules, but to observe tendencies and expand your knowledge as necessary whenever you might see an exception. In my mind, I cannot see any reason to favor answer choice (A) over (B)—eastern state in the latter better parallels western states from the earlier part of the sentence. (If two options are qualitatively the same, you should be able to eliminate both.) More to the point, if the phrase were moved so that it appeared right next to ten of the western states, then the verb would be understood to apply to both:

By 1914, ten of the western states, but only one eastern state, had granted women the right to vote.

If the phrase is instead placed at the end of the sentence, the reader anticipates information after but that might comment on women's right to vote: had granted women the right to vote, but... It is jarring to then encounter the second element of a comparison of sorts without a reminder that the sentence is holding one action up to another action (here, the same one, just performed in different locations). That is what the missing verb achieves. In conversational English, people use ellipsis in a number of ways that would not be acceptable on the GMAT.

Perhaps another Expert will speak more to rules, but I am quite often not going to be your guy. In any case, good luck with your studies. (Maybe 2023 will be your year to put this test behind you.)

- Andrew

AndrewN omkarkhanvilkar CrackverbalGMAT Bunuel

Option B looks much better. Please help
(B) only one eastern state (had granted women the right to vote)
(E) only one(one what? states? ) in the East had (granted women the right to vote)

For option E, we cant use "state" as this form is not mentioned in the passage. Option B seems the best from the lot.

Hello, vishalsinghvs08. I have discussed answer choice (B) above, its pros and cons, so I will let that one be. As for (E), I think you are too narrowly interpreting only one, which could just as easily refer to the prepositional phrase of the states, rather than the singular state. (Just because other options say state does not mean you have to preserve the phrasing in any other option. The underlined portion can be negotiated.)

Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew

The C version is grammatically correct, but the meaning it conveys doesn't make sense.

After all, it doesn't make sense to use "but" to contrast the following two ideas:

"ten of the western states had granted women the right to vote"

and

"in the East there was only one state"

Notice that the C version seems to illogically contrast how many western states had granted women the right to vote with simply how many states there were in the East.