As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticat

Hi,

It is not that But also would be wrong here, its only that the choices containing "not only ... but also" have other errors..
At times to lay more emphais, NOT ONLY is followed by a CLAUSE here .... so "but also" should have a clause..
But choices D and E are missing the SUBJECT, hence wrong..
even C does not have a subject..

A and B have "subject" but 'such as' is correctly used in A to give examples..

A

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended core meaning of this sentence is that thieves are not only able to divert cash from company bank accounts, but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and they can sell the data to competitors.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Verb Forms + Tenses + Parallelism + Grammatical Construction

• Information that is permanent in nature is best conveyed through the simple present tense.
• If a list has only two elements, they must be joined by a conjunction.
• The infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + sell" in this case) is the preferred construction for referring to the purpose/intent of an action.
• “not only A but also B” is the correct, idiomatic usage; A must be parallel to B.

A: Correct. This answer choice includes the independent clause "they can also pilfer..and sell...to competitors" - this clause is independent, as it acts upon the independent subject "they" with the active verb "can" to form a complete thought - thus, the modifier "As criminal activity...sophisticated" has an independent clause to act upon, meaning Option A forms a complete sentence. Further, Option A uses the phrase "and sell", conveying the intended meaning - thieves can pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and as a separate action sell the data to competitors. Additionally, Option A correctly uses the simple present tense verbs "sell" and "pilfer" to refer to information that is permanent in nature. Besides, Option A avoids the parallelism errors seen in Options D and E, as it does not employ the "not only A but also B" construction. Moreover, Option A correctly uses conjunction ("and" in this sentence) to join two elements in a list - the actions "pilfer" and "sell".

B: This answer choice incorrectly uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "selling" in this sentence) to refer to information that is permanent in nature; please remember, information that is permanent in nature is best conveyed through the simple present tense.

C: This answer choice fails to form a complete sentence; "As criminal activity...sophisticated", "not only are thieves...company bank accounts", and "also pilfering valuable information...competitors" are all dependent clauses, meaning there is no independent clause for the modifiers to act upon. Further, Option C incorrectly uses a comma to join two elements in a list - the actions of "pilfering" and "selling"; please remember, if a list has only two elements, they must be joined by a conjunction.

D: Trap. This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "to sell"; the use of the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + sell" in this case) incorrectly implies that thieves can pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans for the purpose of selling the data to competitors; the intended meaning is that thieves can pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and as a separate action sell the data to competitors; please remember, the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + sell" in this case) is the preferred construction for referring to the purpose/intent of an action. Further, Option D fails to maintain parallelism between A ("are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts") and B ("pilfer valuable information...to competitors") in the idiomatic construction "not only A but also B; please remember, “not only A but also B” is the correct, idiomatic usage; A must be parallel to B.

E: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between A ("are thieves able to divert cash from company bank accounts") and B ("pilfering valuable information...to competitors") in the idiomatic construction "not only A but also B; please remember, “not only A but also B” is the correct, idiomatic usage; A must be parallel to B. Further, Option E incorrectly uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "selling" and pilfering in this sentence) to refer to information that is permanent in nature; please remember, information that is permanent in nature is best conveyed through the simple present tense.

Hence, A is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

This is supposedly an official question - hence it is clear that GMAT allows the construction without "but".

All the following forms are correct depending on usage:

not only..., but also....
not only.., but (also)... ( also optional).
not only..., (but) also... (but optional).
not only... (but) (also).. (both but and also optional)

Please refer to the following post for discussion on this particular question (omission of but):
https://gmatclub.com/forum/as-criminal- ... l#p1714185

You may also find a detailed discussion on this concept here:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2009/04 ... -but-also/

I agree with eddy8700... parallelism is an issue in choice D because "not only" is followed by a subject and a verb (subject: "thieves", verb: "are"); therefore, "but also" would also need to be followed by a subject and a verb. In choice D, "but also" is followed only by the verb "pilfer", but no subject. Consider the following example: "Not only do you play tennis, but also coach rugby." This is incorrect for the same reason. Instead, you could use "Not only do you play tennis, but you also coach rugby." or "You not only play tennis but also coach rugby."

Similarly, the following sentence, which mimics choice D, is acceptable: "Thieves not only divert cash from company bank accounts but also pilfer valuable information." ("not only" + verb... "but also" + verb)

Daagh, you're bringing this to a whole new level of grammar intensity! Always fun. (And yes, apparently I'm a grammar nerd or something. I guess it says that in my job title...?)

Disclaimer: unless you really love grammar, just stop reading right now. This isn't an important rant for most test-takers -- there are dozens (hundreds?) of far more important things to worry about on the GMAT.

OK, so answer choice (A) has three components:



So component #1 is clearly a dependent clause. On to #2:



Ah, here it is: this can't stand alone as a sentence, either. Sure, it doesn't have a standard "marker" that "turns" an independent clause into a dependent clause (although, but, and, because, etc.), but it's still a dependent clause: it has a subject and a verb, but can't stand alone -- at least not the way it's written in (A).

So we have two dependent clauses so far. On to part #3:



And there's our independent clause. So we don't have a comma splice here, and GMAC didn't actually make a mistake in this case -- it's just that the middle clause is super-sneaky.

I hope this helps! And seriously: if you're not daagh and you didn't follow this explanation, please don't worry about it. Again, parallelism and other issues are way more important here.

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 ---- There are two acts the thieves do such as 1. pilfer X, Y, and Z and 2. sell the date. The best choice as I see.

B. they can also pilfer valuable information that includes business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and selling ---and selling is unparallel

C. also pilfering valuable information including business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, selling -- also preferring is an outright fragment

D. but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell -- not only are thieves' is not parallel to 'but also pilfer'

E. but also pilfering valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans and selling -- 'but also pilfering' is a fragment.

Thanks for replying. I was thrown off because, I always eliminate choices that don't contain but also when not only is present. This is the first question I have seen where but also has not been used with not only. So something to keep in mind for future questions. I went for the wrong choice because I was trying to find the idiom match.

While the idiom "Not Only...But Also" is correct, note the placement of "thieves" in the first portion

"Thieves" is placed after Not Only. As such, we need another subject for the second part of the sentence as well. D is missing this.

For example we can say "Not only are thieves....but they can also" OR we can say "Thieves not only are.....but also pilter"

There's also a second error with D that relates to the meaning/parallelism of the sentence
There are 3 actions of parallelism that thieves in from the original sentence: divert cash.....pilter new information....and sell the data
In D, the meaning changes to divert cash....pilter new information including....contract bidding plans to sell the data
Note that now there's only 2 actions that is parallel. The original meaning of the sentence is that thieves sell the data to companies. In D the meaning changes to that the thieves pilter new information including contract bidding to sell the data to new companies. This is illogical since contract bidding are not used to sell data to new companies.

Hope this helps explain why D is incorrect! Please leave kudos if you like the explanation!

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).

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.

This is supposed to be choice A, the OA.

Let me now rephrase it for easy understanding by flipping the subject and verb.

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

The question is about the structure of this sentence. Isn't part 1 a complex sentence with a dependent clause and an independent clause?
2. For all that, part 2 seems to be an IC. Therefore, the whole scheme is that this is a complex- compound sentence with two ICs. Eventually when there are two ICs, then there should a valid conjunction or punctuation such as semi colon or period to conjugate both the ICs. If a comma alone conjugates both, then it will turn out to be a comma splice.

Is my reasoning missing something n error or does this sentence belong to some other type of sentence structure that I haven't known.

P.S:It has been pointed out that GMAC spends anywhere from $1500 to $3000 on each of these questions. Therefore, I feel strongly that I must be wrong.

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

Correct idiom is "Not only X but also Y" or "Not only X but Y"
In options D and E, X and Y are not parallel to each other, in both the options, X is a noun and Y is a verb/action, so not parallel
Also in the actual sentence, thieves are doing 3 things: divert, pilfer, and sell--> hence these should be parallel
In option B and C, selling is not parallel

Hence A is the best answer which avoids all the above-mentioned problems

Hi Ratnesh, generally with a not only...but also structure, the verb is outside of the idiomatic construct. So, a better sentence would be:

....thieves can not only divert cash from company bank accounts but also pilfer valuable information...

Even in the sentence that you have suggested, at the very least, I would add a can to the second part, so as to not change the meaning of the original sentence.

...thieves not only are able to divert cash from company bank accounts, but also can pilfer valuable information....

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.

GMATNinja,
Hi
Welcome and best wishes. Thanks for the response
Yes true! In GMAT, I agree we should not too bother about such flexible things as sentence structure, correlatives etc as much as we would do with the broader things such as list parallelism, verb parallelism or modifications etc to name a few. It also seems to be a trick that the entire attention has been diverted to the use of a popular idiom, while the real errors have been obscured though not deliberately in the incorrect choices. Test takers must be wary of this not so uncommon ploy.

AG95, there is a clear cut parallelism error in option D. Meaning wise, stealing and selling is not inherently worse than stealing to sell. A lot of thieves steal things for their own use and not necessarily for the purpose of selling. I can't see anything wrong with both the activities happening parallely and option D has a clear cut grammatical issue.

If we had a construction as;;;As criminal activity on the Internet becomes more and more sophisticated, thieves not only are able to 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.
Would this be a right construction? I asked this question because I want to understand the reasoning for the end part of 2 options,
A. they can also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans, and sell
VS
D. but also pilfer valuable information such as business development strategies, new product specifications, and contract bidding plans to sell

Hi Ratnesh, you are right that infinitives (to sell in this case) show intent.

However, in this case, the use of infinitive seems to be slightly changing the meaning of the original sentence. The original sentence says that thieves can do two things: They can -

i) pilfer data and
ii) sell the data

So, the original sentence suggests that the pilfered data can be sold.

On the other hand, D suggests that the data is pilfered with the sole intent of being sold. That's a slight change in meaning.