Elizabeth Barber, the author of both Prehistoric Textiles, a comprehen

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Concepts tested here: Idioms + Parallelism + Awkwardness/Redundancy

• “both A and B" or "A as well as B" are the correct usages; A and B must be parallel and comparable.
• The correct idiomatic construction is "authority on A".
• The correct idiomatic construction is "account of A".

A: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between A and B in the idiomatic construction "both A ("Prehistoric Textiles") and B("of Women's Work")"; please remember, "both A and B" is the correct idiomatic construction; A and B must parallel and comparable. Further, Option A uses the needlessly wordy phrase "and also", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

B: This answer choice incorrectly uses the unidiomatic construction "authority about A"; please remember, the correct idiomatic construction is "authority on A". Further, Option B uses the needlessly wordy phrases "and also" and "expert authority", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

C: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between A and B in the idiomatic construction "both A ("Prehistoric Textiles") and B("of Women's Work")"; please remember, "both A and B" is the correct idiomatic construction; A and B must parallel and comparable. Further, Option C incorrectly uses the unidiomatic construction "account about A"; please remember, the correct idiomatic construction is "account of A".

D: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between A and B in the idiomatic construction "both A ("Prehistoric Textiles") and B("of Women's Work")"; please remember, "both A and B" is the correct idiomatic construction; A and B must parallel and comparable. Further, Option D incorrectly uses the unidiomatic construction "account about A"; please remember, the correct idiomatic construction is "account of A". Additionally, Option D incorrectly uses the unidiomatic construction "authority about A"; please remember, the correct idiomatic construction is "authority on A". Besides, Option D uses the needlessly wordy phrase "expert authority", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.

E: Correct. This answer choice correctly maintains parallelism between A and B in the idiomatic construction "both A ("Prehistoric Textiles") and B ("Women's Work")". Further, Option E correctly uses the idiomatic constructions "account of A" and "authority on A". Besides, Option E is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.

Hence, E is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Okay remember this rule
"Of Both X and Y" is always correct...E is right
"Of Both X and Of Y" is wrong so C and D are out
"Of both X and Also Y" is always wrong so A is out
"of both X and also of Y" is always wrong so B is out

Hi,
As far I know, there must be at least 3 things if we want to use comma (,) before the final 'and'. But, in this question, there are just 2 things in the list (e.g., Prehistoric Textiles and Women's Work)-"a comprehensive work on cloth in the early cultures of the Mediterranean" and " a more general account of early cloth manufacture" are not the things that make list; they are just modifier. So, my question is WHY we've used comma (,) before the final 'and'?
Thanks...

Hi iMyself, the comma is not before the and'; it is after the Mediterranean .

a comprehensive work on cloth in the early cultures of the Mediterranean is an appositive modifier, modifying Prehistoric Textiles. Since the appositive starts with a comma, it should end with a comma (unless the sentence itself is ending).

Let's take a simpler example:

Samuel owns "Mercedes", a swanky car, and "Sentra", a common man's car.

Again, the comma is not before the and'; it is after the car .

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Appositive Modifiers, its application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

That means, if we need to remove any appositive, then we should remove both comma (e.g., before and after comma of modifier), right? Then the remaining will be: Samuel owns "Mercedes"and "Sentra". This one is the perfect sentence.
if I say:
Samuel owns "Mercedes", a swanky car, destroyed by EducationAisle, and "Sentra", a common man's car.
here, ' a swanky car' modifying 'Mercedes' and 'EducationAisle' modifying 'a swanky car'. Now, if we want to remove modifier form the sentence then the remaining will be: Samuel owns "Mercedes", a swanky car and "Sentra", a common man's car. Is the sentence legitimate?
Thanks...

Hi iMyself, not sure I understood the modified sentence you suggested, but let's take another example:

Samuel owns "Mercedes", a swanky car, "Sentra", a common man's car, and "Bentley", a pricey car.

Here, if you remove the appositives (along with the associated delimiting commas), then the sentence would be:

Samuel owns "Mercedes", "Sentra" and "Bentley".

Now one might argue that there are three elements, but no comma before and. So, in this case, think about it this way: since there were three elements + an appositive, there was a comma after the appositive and a comma before the and. So, when we remove the appositive, we should still let the comma (before the and) remain there. So, in this case, after removing the appositives (along with the associated delimiting commas), then the sentence would be:

Samuel owns "Mercedes", "Sentra", and "Bentley".

In any case, such presence/absence of a comma is never a deal breaker in an option.

I misread the positioning of both.
I read it as 'the author both of' instead of 'the author of both'.
However, if the question were as Eliazbeth Barber, the author both of......, would Option C be the better and correct choice? souvik101990

Hello sonikavadhera,

I would be glad to help you resolve your doubt.

The expression the author both of is incorrect. The preposition of has to placed after author to clearly convey that certain books have been written by a particular author. The correct expression is author of both X and Y.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha

Hi GMATNinja,

just a quick Q: Do expert and authority mean the same in original sentence?

WR,
Arpit

Here's my obviously very very hilariously miserably embarrassingly slow answer : yup, "expert" and "authority" are basically synonyms here, so "expert authority" could be considered redundant. I just paid very little attention to that issue in my explanation, since the parallelism thing is something that you'll see WAY more often on the GMAT in general.

I'm sure that I'm too late to be useful, but I hope this helps anyway!

Hi GMATNinja,
I'm bit confused at the red part. In this official sentence, the word expert has been used as adjective and authority has been used as noun. My question is: how two different types of parts of speech can be synonymous each other?
Thanks__

Technically speaking, a noun and an adjective can't be considered synonyms. But that's not the important part in this case. The bigger issue is that the noun and adjective describe exactly the same characteristic -- so they're redundant.

"Expert," as an adjective, means "possessing expertise." An "authority" is "one who possesses expertise." Technically, I suppose you're right that "expert" and "expertise" aren't synonyms, but one implies the other, so you wouldn't want to use both. We wouldn't write, "Tim is an expert who possesses expertise in the little-known field of mongoose endocrinology," and we also wouldn't write "Tim is an expert authority in the field of mongoose endocrinology." (Note to reader: please do not be alarmed by the mountain of mongoose pellets in Tim's office.)

I hope that helps!

A) also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on

(B) also Women's Work, a more general account of cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about

(C) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an authority on

(D) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about

(E) Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an authority on

For those who missed the correlative conjunction parallelism of 'both … and', here is yet another quick fix and you don't have to look at the prompt.

Just kick out A, B, and D for using the redundant expert authority; Dump c for using a wrong idiom 'account about' rather than 'account on'.

Incidentally, the word 'expert' is as much a noun as an adjective, just as 'executive' or 'absolute' is or 'unique' is in rare cases.

Hello Everyone!

Let's take a quick look over this question and highlight the major differences between the options in orange. That way, we can decide how to best tackle this question and get to the right answer quickly!

Elizabeth Barber, the author of both Prehistoric Textiles, a comprehensive work on cloth in the early cultures of the Mediterranean, and also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on textiles in ancient societies.

(A) also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on
(B) also Women's Work, a more general account of cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about
(C) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an authority on
(D) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about
(E) Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an authority on

After a quick glance over the options, it's clear there are two places we can focus on:

1. How they begin: also of / also / of / none
2. How they end: expert authority on / expert authority about / authority on

Let's start with #1 on our list because it deals with idioms.Whenever we use the word "both" to combine two things, it should be structured like this:

both X and Y

That's it. As long as X and Y are parallel objects, that's all you need to say. So let's take a closer look at each option to see if any of them follow this rule, and toss out the ones that don't:

(A) also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on --> both X and also of Y = WRONG
(B) also Women's Work, a more general account of cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about --> both X and also Y = WRONG
(C) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an authority on --> both X and of Y = WRONG
(D) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about --> both X and of Y = WRONG
(E) Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an authority on --> both X and Y = CORRECT!

There you go - option E is the ONLY one that follows the idiom's structure correctly!

**********

If you were to tackle #2 on the list first, this is how it would break down:

(A) also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on
This is INCORRECT because it's redundant to say both "expert" and "authority." They essentially mean the same thing, and using both doesn't add anything to the overall meaning.

(B) also Women's Work, a more general account of cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about
This is INCORRECT for two reasons. First, it's redundant to use both "expert" and "authority." Second, it's not idiomatically correct to say someone is an "expert about" a topic. They are an "expert ON" a topic.

(C) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an authority on
This is OKAY if we only focus on the ending - it doesn't have the redundancy or idiom problems we saw in A & B.
(However, we know this is ultimately INCORRECT because it doesn't use the "both X and Y" idiomatic structure correctly.)

(D) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about
This is INCORRECT because it's redundant to say both "expert" and "authority." It also doesn't use the correct idiom "expert on."

(E) Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an authority on
This is CORRECT! It doesn't use any redundancies, and it uses the correct "expert on" idiomatic structure!

We still end up going with option E as the correct choice! You would still have to choose between options C & E in the end, but since C doesn't use the right idiomatic structure, it's still going be ruled out.


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

I know it's minor issue, but is "account about" worng?

Thank you!

Thanks for the question suminha! Both "account on" and "account about" are grammatically correct. I think saying "account about" is less common, but it's still okay to use.

[quote="betterscore"]Elizabeth Barber, the author of both Prehistoric Textiles, a comprehensive work on cloth in the early cultures of the Mediterranean, and also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on textiles in ancient societies.


(A) also of Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on

(B) also Women's Work, a more general account of cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about

(C) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an authority on

(D) of Women's Work, a more general account about early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority about

(E) Women's Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an authority on

This can be solved in 30 sec pretty easily
just know
both x and y
x and y should be parallel word by word for this level of question'

E is the answer