As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticat

gmatexam
Hi
I do not think that a convention cannot be broken for the sake of clarity. Of course, we are led to think that between just two items in a list, there is no need to use a comma. However, if you wish to ensure that the second item is certainly a disparate item from the prior one, then there may be no harm in using that comma. However, I would have an open mind, if at least in GMAT some choice has been disqualified for using or misusing the Oxford comma. As you may see, this very OG question is a case in point that GMAT couldn't care less about it.
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Dear Gmat Ninja

Does choices A have the folloing structure: Not only + Clause 1, Clause 2? If the word "also" were removed from the second clause, would choice A still correct?

As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, Thieves are able to not only divert cash from company bank accounts, but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell the data to competitors.

Is this modified sentence correct ?

Experts pls help.

Hello rishabhdxt,

I will be glad to help you out with this one.

The modified version of the sentence is grammatically correct. However, it does not present the same meaning as the original sentence does.

The original sentence says that the thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts. But the sentence presents just possibility of other actions mentioned as they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and (can) sell the data to competitors.

Use of can in the original sentence presents possibility of an action while the modified sentence presented by you presents actions that take place for sure. This change does lead to change in the meaning of the original sentence.

I understand that our first instinct is to look for but also Y whenever we see not only X, especially when it appears in the non-underlined portion of the sentence.

But the structure of the not only X portion in this official sentence is such that writing the remaining information in but also Y manner will be difficult.

So here we get to learn a new usage from this official sentence. In certain cases, not only X can be used just by itself if the structure of the sentence demands so.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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I suppose it does have that structure, with "clause 2" as the independent (main) clause in the sentence. And the best way to think about "also" is that it can only really affect the meaning of the sentence on the GMAT, since there really aren't any interesting, absolute grammar rules governing its use -- or at least none that you need to worry about on this particular exam. In this case, I think (A) would be tolerable without the "also", but the sentence is probably a little bit clearer with the "also" included.

More importantly, though: all five answer choices include the word "also", so it's not really worth worrying about in this case.

I hope this helps!
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Before we jump in, let’s talk about “not/but” constructions on the GMAT. It seems like a lot of people view that construction as an idiom that needs to be memorized: “not only… but also…” But I don’t really think that’s the best way to think about it (and I’m opposed to memorizing idioms in general, unless you have TONS of spare time on your hands).

A better way to think about “not… but…” constructions is that they indicate parallelism. In general, whatever follows “not” (or “not only” or “not just”) needs to be parallel to whatever follows “but” (or “but also”). That’s the most important thing: think of “not/but” as a parallelism trigger, not an idiom.

But then what about the “only” and the “also”? Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to them. There is absolutely no rule indicating that “not only” must be followed by “but also.” In theory, “only” and “also” might tweak the meaning of the sentence – but absolutely ANY word can tweak the meaning of the sentence. There’s nothing special about these particular words.

So just because you have the phrase “but also” doesn’t mean that you need a “not only.” And just because you have a “not only” doesn’t mean that you need a “but also.” Either can exist in isolation, as long as the sentence makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong: “not/but” constructions are pretty common on the GMAT, and you should definitely pay attention to them. But you’ll want to focus on them as parallelism triggers, and not as some sort of standard phrase that MUST appear in the same form every time.

With that in mind, this question gets a whole lot easier...


The first things I notice are the two uses of “and”, both of which indicate some sort of parallelism. (And again: “not only” is just hanging out by itself. We do NOT have a “not/but” construction here, since there’s no “but.” That’s complete fine, and not worth worrying about, as long as it makes sense meaning-wise.)

So let’s figure out what’s actually parallel here. We actually have two different “lists”, since we have two different “and’s”:

• ”they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell…” → Totally fine! The thieves do two things: “pilfer (a bunch of data)” and “sell the data to competitors.” Makes sense.
• ”they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell…” → Also fine! The thieves pilfer three examples of valuable information: business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans.

I don’t see any issues at all here, so let’s keep (A).


There are only two things that change from (A) to (B). First, “valuable information such as” has been changed to “valuable information that includes”, and I don’t think that’s a huge problem, but I think it’s a little bit clearer to just say “such as.” After all, these are just examples of “valuable information.”

The bigger problem: “and sell” has been changed to “and selling.” “Selling” follows the parallelism trigger “and”, and that’s a problem: nothing is parallel with “selling” (a participle, if you like jargon).

And that’s a perfectly good reason to eliminate (B).


And now we have an epic mess of unnecessary “-ing” modifiers!

For starters, I don’t understand why we would say “…not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, also pilfering valuable information…” There’s no reason for “pilfering” to be a modifier here. It needs to be a verb, as it is in answer choice (A).

I’d make a similar argument for the word “selling”, which seems to modify the preceding phrase (“…also pilfering valuable information including (three things)…”). That doesn’t really make sense, though: “selling” is a separate action from “pilfering”, and there’s no good reason for one of them to modify the other.

So we can eliminate (C), too.


Now we finally have that “not/but” construction that everybody loves so much. Again: you want to think of it as a parallelism trigger, not as an idiom.

And there’s a problem with the parallelism! We have “not only are thieves able to divert cash… but also pilfer valuable information such as….” The “not only” is followed by a clause, with a subject and a verb; “but also” is followed by just a verb and an object – so NOT a clause. Structurally, this isn’t parallel at all.

The phrase “to sell” isn’t ideal, either. Even if we rearrange a little bit to fix the parallelism, we have “(thieves) pilfer valuable information… to sell the data to competitors.” That’s not necessarily WRONG, exactly, but it seems like a lousy way to say “(thieves) pilfer valuable information… AND sell the data to competitors.” It’s much clearer if “pilfer” and “sell” are structurally parallel, since we have two parallel actions completed by the thieves.

So (D) is gone.


(E) is a funky mashup of some of the mistakes in the other answer choices. The parallelism doesn’t work, for starters: just like (D), (E) gives us “not only (clause)… but also (verb)…” See the explanation for (D) for more on that issue. There’s also no good reason to structure “pilfering” and “selling” as modifiers, when they could be nice, clear verbs.

So (E) is out, and we’re left with (A).
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As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.

A thing to note here is that not only is followed by a clause, therefore but also must be followed by a clause as well.

A. they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell-Correct

B. they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling- Corrects the not only but also error, but creates another parallelism error. What is selling parallel to ? bidding ? doesn't makes sense. As per the intended meaning thieves apart from being able to divert cash are also able to do two other things i.e. pilfer and sell. So selling must be "sell" and parallel to pilfer.

C. also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling- out. But also is followed by a verb-ing phrase and not a clause.

D. but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell- out. But also is followed a verb and not a clause.

E. but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling- out. But also not followed by a clause. Parallelism error

Hello sandysilva,

I must say you have presented a very thorough analysis of this official sentence. Your approach is meaning-based. Keep up the good job.


I would just like to say that per your analysis, Choice B corrects the not only X but also Y error. However, that is not the case. This choice, like choice A, does not use the phrase but also Y.

It most certainly has the parallelism error that you have pointed out in your analysis.


Thanks.
Shraddha
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As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.

A. they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell
B. they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling
C. also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling
D. but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell
E. but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling

not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts -- I think this is a backward construction( in which the subject(thieves) follows the verb(are) ).

1.“not only.. but also” -- we can notice that there is no “but (also)”. Is it an error? Yes, in general. However, when we have independent clauses as elements in this idiom structure, we have an exception at hand. We need not have “but also” following “not only”. In these cases, we may have “also” as a modifier of the main verb in the second clause, as in the given sentence. Is this correct?
2. Not only X but also Y ---> X and Y need to be parallel. In general(not only in this structure), can a backward construction be parallel to a normal one(in which subject precedes the verb) ?
3. Why are backward constructions generally used? Is it used to emphasize something or just a stylistic choice?
4.
they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell -
a.The comma(Oxford comma) used after new product specifications -- is it necessary on the GMAT ?
b. The comma after contract bidding plans (before and sell) - since there are only 2 items in the list do we need a comma ?

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , mikemcgarry , egmat , sayantanc2k, DmitryFarber , MagooshExpert , daagh , other experts- please help
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Yes. The first is a clause. Whether the subject precedes the verb or not does not change that.

If you are using a clause in the beginning with not only, you must invert the order of the subject and verb in the first clause. You can read more about inversion in general [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject–verb_inversion_in_English]here[/url].

We'll need to be careful about using any "rules" when it comes to commas on the GMAT. The GMAT does not test commas except in an extremely limited number of ways, and there are questions in which almost every comma "rule" is broken (not all in the same question ) in the correct option (or the portion that is non-underlined).
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Hi GMATNinja,

I see GMAT playing lot with Not only ..But also idiom..

I have noticed the following variations in official questions so far..Can you please tell if I am missing something..

1. Not Only ..But Also
2. Not X ..But Y
3. Not X ..But Rather Y
4. Not just X..But Y
5. Not only X....also Ycurrent one
6. .....But Also(Not only skipped here)
7.Not X yet Y

Incorrect ..Not X But only Y
Incorrect..Not X rather Y


Ohh yes..I am not learning idioms but I am definitely noting down the ones which I have seen in OGs


Thanks

I hate to be a wet blanket, but I see no value in learning all of the different variations of “not only… but also…” phrases. Most test-prep guides seem to imply that these are idioms you should memorize, and I think that completely misses the point.

The important thing: when you see a “not (only) _____... but (also) _______” phrase, the GMAT is usually testing you on parallelism. The content of the first blank needs to be parallel to the contents of the second blank. And the “only” and the “also” have NOTHING to do with the parallelism at all. They might affect the meaning, but that’s it.

The not/but structure generally demands strict parallelism, but if one of those is missing, then it’s a totally different structure. You could have the word “not” without the “but”, and vice-versa. That’s part of why I think it’s a lousy idea to memorize these idioms: tons of test-takers see a “but” and automatically hallucinate the word “not”, or they see the word “not”, and assume that we need a “but” somewhere. That simply isn’t true.

So whenever you see a phrase with BOTH “not” and “but”, your priority is to think about parallelism first, and meaning second. And that’s it. Beyond that, please don’t overthink these. There are a million ways to use the words "not" and "but" -- with or without each other -- and there's no value in trying to learn every variation.

I hope this helps!
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Hello Everyone!

This is a great example of a GMAT question that focuses on parallelism! Let's start by taking a quick look at the original question, and then highlight any major differences between the options in orange:

As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.

(A) they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell
(B) they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling
(C) also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling
(D) but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell
(E) but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling

After a quick glance over our options, a few key differences jump out that we can focus on:

1. they can also pilfer / also pilfering / but also pilfer / but also pilfer (Parallelism)
2. such as / that includes / including (Idioms & Meaning)
3. and sell / and selling / selling / to sell (Parallelism)

Let's start off with #1 and #3 on our list because they both deal with the same issue: parallelism! Whenever you see a list on the GMAT, it's a good idea to do a quick check for parallelism because that's a pretty common issue with list questions! When we look at the original sentence, we can see that this is a somewhat complex list:

As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.

We need to ask ourselves "What are thieves able to do?":

1. divert cash from company bank accounts
2. pilfer information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans
3. sell data to competitors

Let's check each of our options to make sure each item on the list is worded using parallel structure. We already know that the word "divert" stays the same because it's not underlined...which is a hint for how the other items should be worded! Let's see how they break down:

(A) they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell --> divert / pilfer / sell = PARALLEL

(B) they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling --> divert / pilfer / selling = NOT PARALLEL

(C) also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling --> divert / pilfering / selling = NOT PARALLEL

(D) but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell --> divert / pilfer / to sell = NOT PARALLEL
(This is also incorrect because by eliminating the comma after "plans," it changes the meaning. It now pushes together "contract bidding plans," which should be part of item #2 on our list, and "to sell the data to competitors," which needs to be a separate item.)

(E) but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling --> divert / pilfering / selling = NOT PARALLEL


There you go - option A is the only one that uses parallelism with this list question! By focusing on common problems with list questions, we were able to narrow down wrong answers rather quickly!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.
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As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.

What constitutes the sentence is an Independent Clause[ As criminal..becomes..sophisticated], IC[not only are thieves able to divert...accounts], IC[they can also pilfer..and sell..].

FANBOYS are to be used to separate IC's and not commas, which would make them run-on sentences. Are we not using above commas to separate IC's ?

Hi Divya, As criminal..becomes..sophisticated is a Dependent clause.
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OK, What about the the next two IC's separated by comma.

Actually not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts is also not an IC. The presence of not only clearly indicates that there is something else to follow.

In fact, the real lesson to learn from this sentence is that not only need not necessarily be followed by but also.
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Hello DivyaKnows!

Thanks for your question! You are correct to say that we use coordinating conjunctions (FANBOYS) to separate independent clauses. Where I think you're getting mixed up is identifying which clauses are dependent and independent. Remember that independent clauses MUST be able to stand alone. If we separate each of the clauses visually, this might be easier to spot:

Original Sentence:

As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts, they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors.

Clauses:

As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated = cannot stand alone --> DEPENDENT clause

Not only are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts = cannot stand alone --> DEPENDENT clause

They can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell the data to competitors. = can stand alone --> INDEPENDENT clause

We can use commas by themselves to separate the dependent clauses from each other, and we can also use commas to separate the dependent clauses from the independent clauses. The only time we need to use FANBOYS is when we're connecting two independent clauses together. Since there is only one independent clause here, just using commas is fine.

I hope this helps!
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Hello , generis

In option A , I am concerned about the connector and.

if you connect 2 sentences/ clauses with "and" you are implying that the two sentences are independent of each other.
But I think they pilfer to sell. These are not independent.