Small business owners play important roles

Semi colon connects two independent clauses, Right? I doubt "D" is correct, as I don't think the second part (after the colon) is an independent clause. It would be great if somebody can explain the correctness of option "D".

Thanks,
Rushil

THis is a stright case of parallelism. Small business owners verb, providing...;hiring...; and occasionlly bringing...

Even i doubt D is the correct answer.

Semi colon does connect two independent clauses that are closely connected in thought.
Going with the above, IMO A should be the answer.

Elimination of rest is as mentioned before.

Cheers
Sony

IMO, semicolon can be used to separate examples when using colon causes confusion.
Hence, it should be D as OA.

Where is the example in D??

Cheers
Sony

D,

providing products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists;
hiring both older and younger workers;
and
occasionally bringing

Parallelism of verb-ing forms ....

a semicolon can be used to separate the items in a list when those list items also contain commas. The trick is the semicolon before the and as well this is a trick I have seen used several times on the official GMAT.

semicolon black magic. I didn't think semicolons could be used like commas

The question is incorrect, an independant clause requires a subject+ verb, so the answer cannot be B, C or D as they are fragments. A+E provide no antecedent to the pronoun but would be preferable, although incorrect, to B C and D which are grammatically incorrect. Apart from being wrong, the preferable replacement for a common on the gmat would be a dash.



Clearly this is not an offical question, you should be careful with that

The missing semicolon " ; " in the option A is the reason why I chose option 'A'. However, after checking the original sentence, I am perfectly fine with option 'D' being the correct choice. [Edit] Just realized that 'A' is laden with errors. Corrected those errors in the end.

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists; they hire both older and younger workers; and occasionally bring new life to dilapidated shopping centers.

A) they hire both older and younger workers and occasionally bring

D) hiring both older and younger workers; and occasionally bringing

My two cents -- Many of you said that 'they' doesn't have a proper antecedent.
If, there is no semicolon in the given sentence as stated in option A, then we have two independent clauses connected by a semicolon. So, "they" can still refer to subject of the first clause (as both these clauses, though independent, are still connected by closely related idea)

I will correct the sentence, in which case 'A' can be the answer. Note the highlighted words.

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers, and independent craftsman as well as international artists; they hire both older and younger workers occasionally bringing new life to dilapidated shopping centers.

Clauses separated by a ";" should be parallel and should also be closely related.

Nevertheless 'D' is the correct option--> nicely disguised parallelism.

I am stunned and suprised. How come D is the answer. The last part of the sentence.. ' ; and occasionally bringing ' cannot stand on it own because it has and at the beginning.

This is clear flaw in the usage of semicolon.

Please educate me.

the option D maintains the parallelism of the whole statement so it is the answer

Nice question....I was stumped for a second. The semi colon is used as a super comma, because there is a list within the parent list. So what we want is 'providing..., hiring..., and bringing...', which is answer D.

Can someone find a single instance of a problem either in the OG or GMATPrep that tests the use of semicolons for lists? I have never seen it.

Hi jwang27!
I think you are looking for this problem. Moreover, i suspect that question under discussion is a "brother" of OG question below. Hope it helps!
tropical-bats-play-important-roles-in-the-rain-forest-132440.html

modifiers must be properly connected
here we have a list of 3 modifiers. only in D the list of modifiers is given correctly.

Really. No one explained why D is correct option. Semicolon does not allow me to choose it as a right answer.

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists, hiring both older and younger workers and occasionally bringing new life to dilapidated shopping centers - this sentence is fine, but semicolon... ?

But if it is allowed to use semicolons in list, D is fine