V11-03

Official Solution:


In no other industry would firms resort to such idiosyncratic ideas, ideas as milking their best suppliers dry, as would the western retail-food sector do.


A. as milking their best suppliers dry, as would the western retail-food sector do.
B. such as milking their best suppliers dry, as would the retail-food sector in the west.
C. as milking their best suppliers dry, as the retail-food sector in the west does.
D. such as milking their best suppliers dry, as the retail-food sector of the west.
E. such as milking their best suppliers dry, as in the retail-food sector of the west.


It is intended to compare the two prepositional phrases in no other industry and in retail food-sector of the west. With a second verb (would do or does), the parallelism is violated and a wrong comparison between firms (subject of the first verb would) and retail-food sector (subject of the second verb) is introduced. An example (that it is good to milk their best suppliers dry) should be introduced by such as, not as.

(A) Comparison between firms and retail-food sector. Example introduced by as.

(B) Comparison between firms and retail-food sector.

(C) Comparison between firms and retail-food sector. Example introduced by as.

(D) Comparison between a prepositional phrase (in no other industry) and a noun phrase (retail food sector)

(E) CORRECT. First consider the simpler form of the sentence:
The part “In no other industry would firms resort to” is parallel to the part “(firms) in the retail-food sector of the west (would resort to)” using such..... as.

The parallelism marker is: such.... as.

The parallel elements are:

Omitting the repeated words in the second part of the comparison, the sentence becomes:

Now an example of an idiosyncratic idea is introduced using an absolute phrase including such as (the absolute phrase is “ideas such as milking their best suppliers dry”). The absolute phrase is set off between commas for clarity.

Thus there are 2 such as constructions in the sentence:


Answer: E