This question is from our
Ask Me Anything About SC thread. Reposting it here in case it helps anybody:
brains wrote:
At the end of 2001, motion picture industry representatives said that there were about a million copies of Hollywood movies available online and expected piracy to increase with high-speed Internet connections that become more widely available.
(A) online and expected piracy to increase with high-speed Internet connections that become more widely available
(B) online and expect the increase of piracy with the wider availability of high-speed Internet connections
(C) online, and they expect more piracy to increase with the wider availability of high-speed Internet connections
(D) online, and that they expected the increase of piracy as high-speed Internet connections would become more widely available
(E) online, and that they expected piracy to increase as high-speed Internet connections became more widely available
Hello Charles. The above question has loosened my bolts of concepts and i will really appreciate if you could help me with my following queries
1. How would you approach this question?
2. I believe many experts are saying that "said " and expected are parallel and if they are parallel , how come in choice E , being a list of two items the "expected" item is followed by " and" preceded by a comma. Basically if we have two entities parallel why would we need comma before "and" . I thought it to be an independent clause.
Good question! First, I'd pick off some low-hanging fruit. Both (B) and (C) use the present tense "expect." The timeframe of the action is established by the phrase "at the end of 2001," so we want a past tense verb. Two down.
Next, I might ask myself whether I need "that." In (D) and (E), we have a nice parallel construction: the representative said two things: 1) that there were a million copies of movies available and 2) that they expected piracy to increase. Makes sense.
In (A), because there's no second "that" it seems as though the actions are unconnected. The representatives said there were a million copies of movies available, and perhaps unrelated, they also expected piracy to increase. This isn't fundamentally wrong, but it seems less logical than the construction we have in (D) and (E) in which it's crystal clear that the actions are connected.
Also, the phrase "expected piracy to increase with high-speed Internet connections that become more widely available," is a problem. It sounds as though piracy will increase as widely available high-speed Internet connections increase, as opposed to less-widely available Internet connections, which apparently don't increase with piracy. It makes far more sense to convey the idea that piracy will increase as the high-speed connections become more available, generally. So (A) is out.
Last, in (D), the phrase "the increase of piracy as high-speed Internet connections," makes it sound as though piracy is increasing in the form of high-speed Internet connections. A person can go to a party
as a clown, but piracy cannot increase
as a high-speed internet connection. Offer a brief eulogy for (D), and (E) is our winner.
As for your second question, a public service announcement: there are almost no hard rules governing comma usage. There are conventions, sure, but ultimately, commas can always be used if a writer feels as though a pause will help clarify the meaning of a sentence. So if you're debating about whether a comma is appropriate, remind yourself of this, and look for other decision points instead.
I hope that helps!
I just have a small question, the reasoning used to eliminate D can also be used to eliminate E, "piracy to increase as high speed internet connections" can also mean that piracy is increasing in the form of high- speed internet connections.
close
23 Jun 2023, 04:59
