A shockingly indelible moment, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I found out that Kurt Cobain had died.

A. A shockingly indelible moment, (The option depicts that the speaker is shocked that he remember something, not on what he remember) (Incorrect)
B. A shocking, indelible moment, (shocking and indelible looks to be parallel with I remember here, which is illogical) (Incorrect)
C. It was a shocking and indelible moment; (Correcting all mistakes, the clauses look better independently and are making sense to the situation that the speaker was shocked at that time and he remember what happened)
D. Shocked and indelible, (Same mistake as A)
E. Shocking and I will never forget it, (Wordy! Indelible is short and concise) (Incorrect)

Answer is C

A shockingly indelible moment, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I found out that Kurt Cobain had died.

A. A shockingly indelible moment,
Modified I wrongly

B. A shocking, indelible moment,
moment modifies I wrongly

C. It was a shocking and indelible moment;
2 independent ideas clubbed together
1. how was the moment ? - express clearly
2nd something happened in that moment

D. Shocked and indelible,
Meaning change: I was not shocked and indelible. It was that moment. Moment was shocking and indelible.

E. Shocking and I will never forget it,
Not parallel
Shocking ,I modifies wrongly

IMO-C
A. A shockingly indelible moment,
incorrect- A shocking indelible moment incorrectly modifying I( person)

B. A shocking, indelible moment,
Incorrect - A shocking , indelible moment incorrectly modifying I( person)

C. It was a shocking and indelible moment;
Correct-

D. Shocked and indelible,
Incorrect- it is changing the meaning of sente

E. Shocking and I will never forget it,
Incorrect- indelible is more concise than I WILL NEVER FORGET IT

Posted from my mobile device

I don’t understand how, in C, these are two separate ideas? Meaning wise C is on shaky ground.

AndrewN MartyTargetTestPrep — need help on this one.

I went with A purely on meaning since A had an absolute phrase modifying the subsequent clause.

Posted from my mobile device

You have to be careful, ravigupta2912, with the placement of any type of modifying phrase, or the door is open to ambiguity. All the answer choices except for (C) suffer from the same modifier flaw (even if (E) is more nonsensical in its construction, pairing a single-word adjective and an independent clause within that phrase). In (A) and (B), I am expecting to see an answer to the question of which moment right across the comma, and instead I get an I. For these introductory phrases to work, we would need to see a proper subject follow, as in, the death of Kurt Cobain... or, news of the death of Kurt Cobain... Meanwhile, (D) and (E) leave out the information about the moment, meaning we have to pin shocked or shocking, once again, to I, the subject of the main clause that follows the comma. An aside—even an absolute phrase that precedes the main clause should still clearly modify the subject that follows the comma:

Its mast broken in the gales of a hurricane, the ship was miraculously able to make it to port.

As for (C), it is passable because it is the only sentence that does not suffer from a modifier error. It is used as a placeholder, not as a pronoun (i.e. you could not replace it with Kurt Cobain had died or any other part of the second clause). The second clause provides more description of the moment in question. Since both halves of the sentence are grammatically sound—they are both independent clauses—and there are no modifier errors, (C) is the best answer of the lot. With that said, I would not worry too much about the question. I doubt (C) would pass the bar as a correct answer to an official question. GMAC™ likes to construct its questions with an airtight logic in mind. This one is more like looking into a funhouse mirror, a distortion of reality that should be taken lightly. (I have said this many times before, but I will say it again: to practice GMAT™ Verbal, stick to official questions. If you have gone through all the OG questions, find others from older editions or other sources, and in the unlikely event that you have exhausted every single official question out there, go back through and do it again, taking the time to get to the bottom of what makes the incorrect answers incorrect.)

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me.

- Andrew

Thanks AndrewN, I take your point. The modifier issue is definitely true in A. Maybe that is why C trumped.

A shockingly indelible moment, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I found out that Kurt Cobain had died.

A. A shockingly indelible moment,
the modifier is not modifies subject I logically

B. A shocking, indelible moment,
Same as A

C. It was a shocking and indelible moment;
This independent clause is conveying proper menaing

D. Shocked and indelible,
modifier is correct for subject I but the combination is not conveying intended meaning

E. Shocking and I will never forget it,
Same As A
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