NandishSS
At the end of the day, the prime minister and her staff ended up both sharing not merely a pessimistic view of potential legislative progress for the foreseeable future; also a fear that her party was losing the initiative on a number of issues.
A) ended up both sharing not merely a pessimistic view of potential legislative progress for the foreseeable future;also
B) share in common not just a pessimistic legislative progress view, but
C) both shared not only a pessimistic view of legislative progress for the foreseeable future but as well
D) ended up sharing not merely their pessimistic view of potential legislative progress, but they also shared
E) shared not only a pessimistic view of potential legislative progress, but also
Option A is incorrect because of faulty idioms.... Both X and Y is correct. Here there is no 'Y' after 'X'. Also The phrase after semicolon ( also a fear that her party was losing the initiative on a number of issues) is not an independent clause. Wrong construction.
Option B changes the tense of the sentence from past to present. Though the new sentence does not have any error but changing tense is not desired. Lets look at the other options.
Not only "..."but also" is the correct idiom. Option C uses 'but as well" and hence is incorrect.
Option D uses "they" and infuses a redundancy error.
Option E is correct . It uses 'not only" .."but also".
VeritasKarishma Is my explanation correct ?