Advertising that one of its many attractions has been the

I do not get why C is not the answer. I do not see timing issue here

I also vote for C. Let's see what has been the content of the advertisement at the time it has been on air. Two contents are possible:
1. one of our many attractions IS the recent growth in per capita income among our citizens.
2. one of our many attractions HAS BEEN the recent growth in per capita income among our citizens.

If "1" has been the content, then C is the correct answer.
If "2" has been the content, then B is the correct answer.
My feeling is that "1" has been the content, so C is the correct answer.

Any thoughts?

Yeah, I think I got it now. The use of "Recent" is usally used with perfect tenses. For that reason, only B suits. That is the only takeway, i could infer, yet nobody mentions this fact. Any thoughts experts??? I am not a native speaker so elaboration on this point would be higly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Recent is usually used with the past perfect, good spotting!

Remember, the past perfect tense is used to indicate actions that were already complete or had already happened at a specific point in the past.

Past Perfect ---------- Time being Discussed ----------------- Now ------Future

A "recent" event is one in the recent past, but one in the past--"recent" growth had already been completed, and was already an attractive feature of Town A, at the time time of the advertising campaign. So, the "had been" tense is correct.

I dont understand this....The Effect growth or its effect is still there....Its not a past event right?? So why B is correct

The part "one of its many attractions had been the recent growth in per capita income among its citizens" is stated within an advertisement by town A. This advertising occurred in the past and hence the verb "had been" is past of past. Therefore past perfect is alright.

The following explanation may further help:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/in-reaction- ... l#p1841110

I urge an expert to provide an elaborate explanation

Hi MI83,

You could try the official question that this question is based on.

Answer: B

A. its many attractions has been the recentUse of Has been is wrong, needs to show sequence (timeline) for the use of pursued.
B. its many attractions had been the recentCorrect
C. its many attractions was the recentWas is incorrect, need to show sequence (timeline) for the use of pursued
D. their many attractions has been the recentNon underlined portion already mentions "Its", Their is wrong for subject Town A.
E. their many attractions had been the recentNon underlined portion already mentions "Its", Their is wrong for subject Town A.

do we really need to use past perfect to show which event happened first.

isn't it clear from the context that recent growth in per capita happened first?

Hello himanshu0123,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the use of the past perfect tense is redundant, only when the order of events is made clear through the use of phrases such as "before" and "after" or the mention of times and dates.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

ExpertsGlobal5

what is right in this context, should we chose option C] over B] because the sequence of events is clear i.e recent growth in per capita happened first.

This question isn't very good. I think AjiteshArun has a much better idea--study the official question, which does not rely on a questionable-at-best split. First, it's important to note that past perfect is never required--it's simply a tool we can use to increase clarity when multiple past events are involved. Second, one could easily argue that in this case, the past perfect is incorrect. It doesn't really make sense to advertise based on something that HAD BEEN an attraction. You'd think it would be better to focus on something that STILL WAS an attraction. The official question has neither of these flaws.

I think you're thinking along correct lines here, but the reality is more extreme: It's wrong to use the past perfect here.

Stating that "one of the area's attractions HAD BEEN... recent income growth" places the ability of this phenomenon to attract businesses into the prior timeframe that had already passed by the time described.

That's nonsense. The area WAS trying to attract new businesses at the past time narrated (= the time at which the town "pursued its campaign"). A campaign of that sort could only make sense if it described attractions that obtained, as attractions, at the time when they were advertised!

Therefore, the correct way to write this sentence is actually C, not B.



To strengthen your intuition for why the attraction status doesn't have to be confined to the timeframe of the income growth itself, consider the same idea but stated in the present instead: "One of the area's current attractions to new businesses IS the recent pattern of growth for its residents").

And, of course, for any tourist site of historical significance, we can definitely make statements such as "This site IS a major tourist attraction because it WAS the site of [fill in historical event]".

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