AhmedMoharam89
GMATNinja
himanshu0077
According to me in option B it appears parallelism is not followed i.e " improper reporting of revenue" (verb-ing) and "to record" ( infinitive form) are not parallel.
Please clarify.
With due Regards.
In (B), the author lists two nouns in parallel: "accounting
irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and
failure to record expenses."
Here, "involving" is just modifying the noun irregularities, and "to record" is just further discussing the noun "failure." It's completely fine for this modifying information to take different forms, and the parallelism in (B) isn't a problem at all.
I hope that helps!
I thought the parallelism is between "improper reporting of revenue" which is a complex gerund AND "failure" which is an action noun.
Am I wrong if I attack the question on such basis?
I understood your explanation above, but how I choose B, as mentioned, is still incorrect?
Don't overcomplicate it! If we're in the weeds, grappling with esoteric terminology, it means we're not thinking about the basic logic and function of what we're reading.
So ignore the simple vs complex gerund stuff. Take another look at the relevant part of (B):
Quote:
There had been accounting irregularities involving
improper reporting of revenue and
failure to record expenses.
The items in red are the two accounting irregularities. They're both noun phrases. They're both things that the company is doing or not doing. Great. They're parallel. End of story.
The takeaway: treat faulty parallelism as an error only if the two elements are
clearly not parallel -- either they don't fit together logically, or they play fundamentally different grammatical roles. If it's a debate -- and if you're wondering about complex vs simple gerunds, it is definitely a debate -- don't treat it as a concrete error, and look for other decision points. Simple as that.
I hope that helps!