Hello Everyone!
Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down our options quickly so we know how to answer questions like this when they pop up on the GMAT! To begin, let's take a quick look at the question and highlight any major differences between the options in
orange:
Although many art patrons can readily differentiate a good debenture from an undesirable one, they are
much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and fakes.
(A)
much less expert in distinguishing
good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and(B)
far less expert in distinguishing
good paintings from poor ones, authentic art from(C)
much less expert when it comes to distinguishing
good paintings and poor ones, authentic art from(D)
far less expert in distinguishing
good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and(E)
far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing
between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, andAfter a quick glance over our options, a couple things jump out that we can focus on:
1. much less vs. far less
2. good painting and/from poor ones; authentic art and/from fakesWhile it may be tempting to tackle #1 on our list first, you should skip it. Why? Because there really isn't a difference between using "much less" and "far less" in this case. This split is meant to distract you from the real problem:
IDIOMS! The idiom we're dealing with today is this:
distinguishing X from YWe need to make sure that each sentence does this correctly
every time it occurs in the sentence. To make problems easier to spot, let's add the last word "fakes" back in:
(A) much less expert in distinguishing good paintings
and poor ones, authentic art
and fakes =
WRONG(B) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings
from poor ones, authentic art
from fakes =
OKAY(C) much less expert when it comes to distinguishing good paintings
and poor ones, authentic art
from fakes =
WRONG(D) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings
and poor ones, authentic art
and fakes =
WRONG(E) far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing
between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, and fakes =
WRONG(The problem with option E is the word "between." It is idiomatically correct to say "distinguish between X and Y." However, by listing all 4 items together as one list, it changes the overall meaning to be "distinguishing between A and B and C and D," rather than pairing up good/poor and authentic/fakes. You're not comparing each of the 4 items to all 3 of the other items, so this is wrong.)There you have it - option B is our answer! By focusing in on the idiom "distinguishing X from Y," we were able to eliminate the wrong options quickly!
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