The Olympic Games helped to keep peace among the pugnacious states of

Dear Experts,

I have gone through all the posts in this thread but I have doubt regarding:
"The Olympic Games helped to keep peace among the pugnacious states"

How can Olympic games "Help"?
it should be "the organizing of Olympic games helped"

Above point is similar to reasoning provided that for option B: "proclaiming" can not be done by Olympic Games(logical)

Kindly clarify

Thanks in advance
EMPOWERgmatVerbal generis GMATNinja VeritasKarishma

For option B, why can't proclaiming modify the action of helped in the previous clause? Explaining how the Olympic game helped the peace?

I'm happy to help with this.
This is GMAT SC #60 in the OG13.

(A) world in that a sacred truce was proclaimed during the festival's month
The OG feels that the phrase "in that" is somewhat stilted and over-formal. It does use two words where one would suffice. This one is not black & white wrong, but more a shade of gray. If all the other answers were clearly wrong, this probably could pass as a correct anwer.

(B) world, proclaiming a sacred truce during the festival’s month
Misplaced modifier. The world isn't "proclaiming", so who is? The games? the states? The GMAT doesn't like ambiguity. Also, this sentence has two distinct actions, so it would be best phrased as two full [noun] + [verb] clauses, and this option casts the second half of the sentence as a participial phrase rather than as a clause. This is wrong.

(C) world when they proclaimed a sacred truce for the festival month
A pronoun with unclear antecedent --- does "they" mean the states? the games? the people of Greece (not mentioned explicitly --- another no-no for antecedents on the GMAT!). The antecedent of the pronoun "they" is ambiguity. On GMAT SC, ambiguity = death. This is wrong.

(D) world, for a sacred truce was proclaimed during the month of the festival
Very clear. We have two full clauses, joined by the conjunction "for" (which means "because"), thus making clear the causal link between the two actions. This is sleek, efficient, and direct ---- a very strong answer.

(E) world by proclamation of a sacred truce that was for the month of the festival
A winner of the flabby awkward Olympics! This changes the verb "proclaimed" to a noun "proclamation", and almost invariably, this is the GMAT's strategy for changing a correct answer into a wrong answer. Whenever a verb is re-written as a noun, that almost always makes the sentence more awkward, less direct, and more wordy --- that's exactly what we have here. This version is an unholy abomination that should be taken out back and shot. This is incorrect.

Again, if everything else failed, we might go with (A) in a pinch, but here, (D) is a much stronger answer --- clearly (D) is the best possible answer here.

Mike

I rejected D because it changed the original meaning of the sentence from a qualifier relationship to a causal relationship. Please guide How i could have prevented this error from happening ?

GMATNinja Quoting you from a post on another question, "The easiest way to assess whether a COMMA + VERB-ing construction works is to recognize that the VERB-ing modifier could be performing one of two functions. It could A) be giving you a consequence of the action given in the previous clause or B) giving you context for the action in the previous clause."

It seems to me as if VERB-ing in answer choice B is performing function B. Please correct me if I am wrong here. Also, it would help immensely if you explain why B is wrong. Thank you.

(B) The Olympic Games helped to keep peace among the pugnacious states of the Greek world, proclaiming a sacred truce during the festival’s month.

I am a non-native speaker and I have a question on D:

"for a sacred truce was proclaimed during the month of the festival".

I thought "for" could only be followed by noun, but it seems to be followed by a sentence. Or maybe there was a "that" which was omitted to make it "for a scared truce that was proclaim..."?

If yes, I am confused about when we should keep or omit "that".

The Olympic Games helped to keep peace among the pugnacious states of the Greek world in that a sacred truce was proclaimed during the festival’s month.


(A) world in that a sacred truce was proclaimed during the festival’s month

(B) world, proclaiming a sacred truce during the festival’s month

(C) world when they proclaimed a sacred truce for the festival month

(D) world, for a sacred truce was proclaimed during the month of the festival

(E) world by proclamation of a sacred truce that was for the month of the festival

Here's the full sentence, with (B) inserted into it:


Yeah, I think it's fair to say that "proclaiming a sacred truce during the festival's month" is trying to give us context for the action in the previous clause. But it's pretty confusing: who, exactly, is doing the proclaiming? Are the Olympic Games themselves proclaiming a truce? The "Greek world"? I don't think either of those make much sense.

Notice that (D) avoids the issue completely: "a truce was proclaimed" is passive voice, but at least it's not illogical.

The other issue I see with (B) is the possessive phrase "festival's month". How does a festival possess a month? That doesn't make much sense, either.

To be fair, I think this is a pretty darned tough question. I think (D) sounds like hot garbage, but sound doesn't matter on GMAT SC, right?

I hope this helps a bit!

D) The Olympic Games helped to keep peace among the pugnacious states of the Greek world, for a sacred truce was proclaimed during the month of the festival.

But, from choice D (correct choice), we still don't know who, exactly, is doing the proclaiming, do we?
Am I missing anything?

But as per the original sentence, there is no information about the doer of the action 'proclaim' and hence option B is distorting the meaning.

Hi Ravs113,

My reply is not specific to this question, but the first option is not special. We should not assume that the correct option will always convey the same meaning as the first option. We should go through all the five options, and then take a call on the intended meaning.