![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/ptg01739194-200x300.jpg\" "\\"ptg01739194\\"")
Below are two excerpts from popular news sources. Accompanying each excerpt is a slightly modified version of the sentence that contains one or more grammatical flaws. See if you know which excerpt is from an actual news source, and which one is the result of my assiduous fudging!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For our first specimen, the correct version is from a New Yorker article:<\/p>\n
A) Leland Stanford was a Republican governor and senator in the late nineteenth century, who made a fortune from the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, which he had helped to found.<\/p>\n
B) Leland Stanford, a Republican governor and senator in the late nineteenth century, made a fortune from the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads that he had helped to find.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Explanation<\/strong><\/p>\n Though the first sentence is a tad longer, it definitely doesn\u2019t contain unnecessary words. The error is between the use of that\/which. \u2018Which\u2019 is used to set off a nonessential clause.<\/p>\n One way to think of it: there is no ambiguity if we remove the relative clause, \u2018which he had helped to found\u2019, it is clear that we are talking about the only Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads. The use of \u2018that\u2019 implies that there is more than oneCentral Pacific and Southern Pacific railroad.<\/p>\n Had the sentence been, \u2018fortune from the railroads\u2026\u2019 then we would need \u2018that\u2019, as Leland Stanford clearly did not helped to found all railroads. (For more on \u2018that\u2019 vs. \u2018which\u2019 check out Mike\u2019s excellent blog post [LINK])<\/p>\n Finally, there is the difference between \u2018to found\u2019 and \u2018to find.\u2019 The former means to establish an organization and is the meaning we are going for here.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The next excerpt is from The Washington Post:<\/p>\n (A) The Google Drive cloud storage service\u00a0had launched yesterday\u00a0to much fanfare, but as with any new Google product, there are important questions about how the company will actually use personal data that has been uploaded to the system.<\/p>\n (B) The Google Drive cloud storage service\u00a0launched yesterday\u00a0to much fanfare, but as with any new Google product, there are important questions about how the company will actually use personal data uploaded to the system.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Explanation<\/strong><\/p>\n Answer choice (A) uses of the past perfect, \u2018had launched.\u2019 We only want to use past perfect if we are discussing two events in the past, one of which happened first. In both cases, the sentence is in present tense, \u2018are important.\u2019 Thus we want simple past, as found in (B), the answer.<\/p>\n Also the \u2018uploaded to the system\u2019 is an adjective clause that modifies \u2018personal data.\u2019 The \u2018has been uploaded\u2019 implies that data that to be uploaded in the future only contains data uploaded to this point. To avoid any tense issues, The Washington Post opts for the adjective clause.<\/p>\n I think such a subtle issue in tense is beyond the GMAT Sentence Correction.\u00a0 Anyhow, every wrong answer in Sentence Correction will have more than one grammar hiccup.<\/p>\n This post was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT expert at\u00a0Magoosh<\/a>, and originally posted\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Below are two excerpts from popular news sources. Accompanying each excerpt is a slightly modified version of the sentence that contains one or more grammatical flaws. See if you know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,783,243,719,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-magoosh-blog","category-blog","category-sentence-correction-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12038,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12036\/revisions\/12038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u00a0Washington Post<\/h2>\n