Although many art patrons can readily differentiate a good debenture

OG 2011- Ques 107
Distinguish x from y is not correct => its unidomatic..
so why here option B is correct?

Official Explanation

Idiom; Parallelism

The preferred idiomatic form is distinguishing X from Y, rather than distinguishing X and Y.

A. This version uses the incorrect idiomatic form distinguishing X and Y.

B. Correct. This version uses the preferred idiomatic form distinguishing X from Y.

C. This version uses the incorrect idiomatic form distinguishing X and Y. Furthermore, expert when it comes to is excessively wordy in comparison to expert in as seen in choices A, B, and D.

D. This version uses the incorrect idiomatic form distinguishing X and Y.

E. Although the form distinguishing between X and Y is an acceptable alternative to distinguishing X from Y, this version fails to capture that what art patrons have difficulty distinguishing between are good paintings and poor ones on the one hand, and authentic art and fakes on the other.

The correct answer is B.

Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down our options quickly so we know how to answer questions like this when they pop up on the GMAT! To begin, let's take a quick look at the question and highlight any major differences between the options in orange:

Although many art patrons can readily differentiate a good debenture from an undesirable one, they are much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and fakes.

(A) much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and
(B) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings from poor ones, authentic art from
(C) much less expert when it comes to distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art from
(D) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and
(E) far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, and

After a quick glance over our options, a couple things jump out that we can focus on:

1. much less vs. far less
2. good painting and/from poor ones; authentic art and/from fakes

While it may be tempting to tackle #1 on our list first, you should skip it. Why? Because there really isn't a difference between using "much less" and "far less" in this case. This split is meant to distract you from the real problem: IDIOMS! The idiom we're dealing with today is this:

distinguishing X from Y

We need to make sure that each sentence does this correctly every time it occurs in the sentence. To make problems easier to spot, let's add the last word "fakes" back in:

(A) much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and fakes = WRONG
(B) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings from poor ones, authentic art from fakes = OKAY
(C) much less expert when it comes to distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art from fakes = WRONG
(D) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and fakes = WRONG
(E) far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, and fakes = WRONG
(The problem with option E is the word "between." It is idiomatically correct to say "distinguish between X and Y." However, by listing all 4 items together as one list, it changes the overall meaning to be "distinguishing between A and B and C and D," rather than pairing up good/poor and authentic/fakes. You're not comparing each of the 4 items to all 3 of the other items, so this is wrong.)


There you have it - option B is our answer! By focusing in on the idiom "distinguishing X from Y," we were able to eliminate the wrong options quickly!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

IDIOMS:

To distinguish X from Y --- Used to distinguish among things that are opposites.
vs
To distinguish between X and Y ---- Used to distinguish among elements with things in common.


Therefore, in this sentence, it is important to use the idiom TO DISTINGUISH X FROM Y.


iN SUMMARY


(A) much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and ---- WRONG IDIOM

(B) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings from poor ones, authentic art from ---- CORRECT. One of the uses of a comma is to give two similar adjectives or elements in a row without the conjunction "and" in the middle. Ex: She is a nice, studious woman.

(C) much less expert when it comes to distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art from ----- WRONG IDIOM

(D) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and ----- WRONG IDIOM

(E) far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, and ----- WRONG IDIOM

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-



Choice A: In Option A, we see the use of the incorrect idiomatic form "distinguishing X and Y" in the phrase "distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and fakes". Thus, Option A is incorrect.

Choice B: Option B preserves the intended meaning of the sentence and utilizes the correct idiomatic form. Thus, Option B is correct.

Choice C: Option C commits the same error found in Option A. Moreover, the phrase "expert when it comes to" is needlessly wordy. Thus, Option C is incorrect.

Choice D: Option D also repeats the error found in Option A. Thus, Option D is incorrect.

Choice E: In Option E, we see a distortion of meaning arising from the use of the phrase "distinguishing between"; the intended meaning of the sentence is that while many art patrons can distinguish between a good debenture and an undesirable one, they are less capable of distinguishing between good paintings and poor paintings and between authentic art and fakes. However, if Option E is utilized, the resultant sentence lists all four elements in one list; this change alters the sentence to mean that the patrons are not as capable of distinguishing between all four elements taken together, as they are capable of differentiating between a good debenture and an undesirable one. Thus, Option E is incorrect.

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of “Use of Distinguish on the GMAT”, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):



All the best!
Experts' Global Team

The correct idiom that we are looking for here is ‘distinguish X from Y’

The trick here is to notice a second pair of contrast that is made at the end of the sentence between ‘authentic art and fake art’.

Let’s scan the options:

(A) much less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and

(B) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings from poor ones, authentic art from

(C) much less expert when it comes to distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art from

(D) far less expert in distinguishing good paintings and poor ones, authentic art and

(E) far less the expert when it comes to distinguishing between good painting, poor ones, authentic art, and

Eliminate Options A, C and D for the wrong idiom.

Eliminate Option E for altering the intended meaning; plus ‘between’ is incorrect for more than two items.

Option B is the best choice.

Hope this helps!

Although got to the correct answer using POE, I have a doubt in the OA. Can someone please explain the role of comma in Option B?

If we want to say that, we are 'distinguishing good paintings from poor ones', and distinguishing 'authentic art from fakes', don't we need conjunction in order to establish parallelism?
Thanks for your help.

amoljain

You'd think so, wouldn't you? One of the major themes in the hardest SC questions, especially those in the Advanced OG, seems to be "Sometimes a correct sentence can get away with breaking what you thought was a rule." This can be very frustrating when we're trying to learn the rules, but I think that the GMAT is testing two related ideas. One, a very well-read person may recognize certain rarer constructions from their wide reading, and therefore may know that a form such as this is okay. Two, someone with a strong mastery of the rules may recognize a certain hierarchy of issues, so that a less problematic answer will be the last one to get crossed out. Unfortunately, there's no easy fix for this, and for that reason it's best to avoid these Advanced OG questions unless the rest of SC is going extremely well.

Having said that, one way to tell that this usage is okay is that we are given no viable option that fixes the issue. This is actually a fairly common occurrence in SC. We'll see something we don't like, and either it appears in all 5 choices, or the choices in which it doesn't appear are severely flawed. In that case, we have to accept that the usage must be okay in the GMAT's eyes.

This popped up on our Ask Me Anything About SC thread. Reposting our answer here, just in case anybody finds it helpful.


The short answer is that the GMAT is fairly lenient when it comes to comma usage, so you always want to look for other decision points. In this case, we are trying to cite two distinct things that art patrons are far less expert in:

1) distinguishing good paintings from poor ones
2) distinguishing authentic art from fakes

If we put an "and" before "authentic art" instead of the comma, we get,

"... distinguishing good paintings from poor ones and authentic art..."

At first glance, it seems like "authentic art" is being grouped with "poor ones" in a parallel list (distinguishing (1) good paintings from (2) poor [paintings] and authentic art). Once we keep reading we can figure out the intended meaning, but an "and" actually makes things more confusing. The comma usage, though nonstandard, makes the intended meaning more clear.

I hope that helps!

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