Europes travel lndustry is suffering as a result of sluggish economy

X, Y AND Z - parallel
A, E - out
C - "but" changes the meaning

D - is better than B (that is persistent)

Persistent [Terrorist Activity] ...

This is not ambiguous, this is just an adjective to a noun that has already one.

obviously down to B & D

B is clearly wrong however because B presents an illogical meaning:

B seems to imply that, in addition to the economy and bad weather, the other problem is ONLY terrorist activity that IS persistent --- illogically implying that terrorist activity that ISN'T persistent is not part of the problem

In parallelism,
1) Do all the elements in the list have to agree in number?

Can we write ---He likes apples, orange and banana.
or should we write --- He likes apples, oranges and bananas.

2) In parallelism, can the elements in the list be modified?
Eg- He likes apples, oranges and bananas that are green in color.

sluggish economy, a stretch of bad weather

(B) and the chilling effect of terrorist activity that is persistent

(D) and the chilling effects of persistent terrorist activity

B has a mix of modifiers before and after activity, whereas D maintains parallelism with all modifiers before activity.

Europe’s travel lndustry is suffering as a result of sluggish economy, a stretch of bad weather as well as the chilling effects of terrorist activity that is persistent.

(A) as well as the chilling effects of terrorist activity that is persitstent - parallelism issue 'as well as'

(B) and the chilling effect of terrorist activity that is persistent

(C) but persistent terrorist activity has had a chilling effect too - usage of but is incorrect as we don't need a contrast

(D) and the chilling effects of persistent terrorist activity

(E) as well as the chilling effects of terrorist activity that persists - parallelism issue 'as well as'

I chose option D over B because of precision. Is there any other reason to eliminate option B?

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma , generis , other experts - please enlighten

(B) and the chilling effect of terrorist activity that is persistent

In (B), the modifier "that is persistent" in the phrase "terrorist activity that is persistent" is restrictive, with the result that the modifier seems indicate that the only type of terrorist activity that has a chilling effect is terrorist activity that is persistent, as if other types of terrorist activity, such as terrorist activity that is not persistent, would have not have chilling effects.

The meaning expressed is therefore somewhat illogical.

Is oxford comma not required in the correct option (before ''and'')?

Regards
Vighnesh

Hello VIGHNESHKAMATH,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, this sentence certainly needs an oxford comma to join the last element in the list with the other two; the omission of this comma is most likely a transcription error.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Can some expert please throw some light on this? Though the difficulty is 5%, the question is actually tough when trying to eliminate answer choices.

It's worth noting that this is a very old question, so I wouldn't stress over it too much. That said, let's give it a shot.

(B) is probably the easiest to eliminate:

• Notice that we have an independent clause after the comma + "but": "persistent terrorist activity has had a chilling effect too." So it seems like we're saying something like "the travel industry is suffering because of X and Y... on the contrary, persistent terrorist activity has had a chilling effect too." The "but" doesn't make any sense because there's no contrast between the two clauses.
• Even if the "but" were appropriate, we'd need an "and" between "sluggish economy" and "a stretch of bad weather" to finish that parallel list before starting the next independent clause.
• We're trying to list three distinct causes of the suffering, so we want "as a result of X, Y, and Z," not "as a result of X, Y, but Z."

That brings us to (A) and (E):

• There's no reason to use "as well as" instead of a simple "and" to link the three reasons why the travel industry is suffering. Maybe if we wanted to emphasize the first two and mention the third as a side note we could do something like, "as a result of sluggish economy and a stretch of bad weather, as well as the chilling effects...," but we don't have an option like that.
• There's also no good reason to use "terrorist activity that is persistent" or "terrorist activity that persists" instead of the much simpler, "persistent terrorist activity." In addition to being unnecessarily wordy, the first two almost make it sound like we're talking about specific terrorist activity that is actively doing something. On the other hand, "persistent terrorist activity" is more succinct and also seems a bit more appropriate since we're talking about terrorist activity in general.
• That gives us two votes against (A) and (E).

So we're down to (B) and (D), which are very similar:

• We have "persistent terrorist activity" in (D) and "terrorist activity that is persistent" in (B) -- as discussed above, "persistent terrorist activity" is a bit better.
• I also like the plural "chilling effects" instead of "chilling effect" -- the plural suggests that the terrorist activity has had a broad range of effects, not just one singular effect, and that makes sense given the complexity of the issue.

Does that make (B) WRONG in a vacuum? Maybe not, but with a couple of small votes against (B), we're left with (D) as our winner.

I hope that helps!

Difficult question. Is there any SV error with effect vs effects? Also, how to differ between 'as well as' vs 'and' usage?

Hey TBT

Happy to help.



Let's compare choices B and D:

1. The first issue with choice B is the use of the ambiguous modifier "that is persistent". It is unclear what the antecedent of the pronoun "that" is. Is it "effect" or "activity"? I'm sure you've heard of "Far Away Noun Modification". If not, please read about it here. Owing to this concept, the relative pronoun "that" could refer to either 'activity' or the slightly far away noun 'effect'. Hence, the use of this clause renders the sentence both wordy and ambiguous. Notice how choice D eliminates this ambiguity by placing the adjective 'persistent' right before 'terrorist activity'.
2. Now, because the terrorist activity mentioned is persistent, it is only logical to expect it to have many "effects" over time. So, although the singular noun "effect" is not deterministically incorrect, "effects" is a lot more appropriate to the context of the sentence.

"As well as" Vs "and":

1. "And" is a conjunction/connector; "as well as" is a phrasal preposition.
2. This means that "as well as" cannot help complete a list, because only a conjunction can do that.
   
   For instance:
   
   • Correct: A, B, C, conjunction D.
     
   • Incorrect: A, B, C, preposition D.
3. So, if we wish to create a list and use "as well as" before the last entity, we must place a conjunction (and) before the penultimate entity.
   
   For instance:
   
   • Correct: A, B, and C as well as D.
     
   • Incorrect: A, B, C, as well as D.

I hope this helps.

Happy learning!

Abhishek