Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and

Most of you were able to reject choices BCD very easily. The conflict was really between choices A and E. This kind of scenario is pretty common for difficult questions.

The thing that threw you off was the placement of modifier "between 2000 and 2010" between a set of commas. Let's just look at the construction of main parts of choice E.

The ski and snowboarding industry lost, between 2000 and 2010, $1.07 billion in revenue.
Basically we have two pieces of information for the verb "lost" - the when and the what?
When has been answered by the modifier - between 2000 and 2010
What has been answered by the phrase - $1.07 billion in revenue
And in order to express these two bits of information, comma pair has been used to separate one information from another.

Now could we have written this in some other manner? Sure we could have. Here are the two ways in which we could have positioned this information:

1: The ski and snowboarding industry lost between 2000 and 2010 $1.07 billion in revenue. - Although there is nothing wrong with this construction, as a writer I feel more comfortable separating out the "between 2000 and 2010" within a comma pair. Such separation aids in better readability of the sentence.
2: Between 2000 and 2010, the ski and snowboarding industry lost $1.07 billion in revenue. - This is similar to choice A. And we could have created an answer choice in which we corrected the parallelism error of choice A. But then you would not have learned such aspect about comma pairs!! And then the question would not have been truly 700+ level question.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Shraddha

Shraddha, thanks so much for the detailed analysis!
BTW is this sentence illogical?
The science book, with a lot of pictorial illustration and which is written by Stephen Hawking was the reason I got into physics.

You are most welcome Souvik.
First of all this sentence is not grammatically correct. The list is not parallel. Secondly, I would not say that it is illogical, but it does not communicate the message very clearly. Logically speaking one of Stephen Hawking book's that contained pictorial illustrations would be the reason the author got into Physics. Is that correct? Now that logical meaning is not communicated very well by this sentence.

@dentobizz - you could figure out the parallelism error in choice A but you still marked choice A as the correct answer since you felt that the construction of choice E was not correct. I hope my explanation above helps you clarify that doubt.

Since discussion on this question is happening concurrently on BTG as well, I am posting Payal's response on BTG over here so that GMAT Clubbers can benefit from it.

This construction is not correct. We cannot have a phrase parallel to a clause. In fact there are multiple ways of making this list parallel, such as:

1: Ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people (Here both entities are phrases)
2: Ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people (Here both entities are clauses)

Just an interesting side note –This sentence also appears in nytimes here. In fact both publications have the same article. It was published just a day before the article on Sydney Morning Herald was published. Not sure if there is a tie up between these two publications. But regardless of that - carefully notice the list in the nytimes article. It uses the correct parallel construction per option 1 above.

Again, it is possible that this was just a publishing error or an error that did not get caught through the editorial process. Happens, after all “To err is Human”

Good discussion souvik101990!

The above construction is not considered correct in written English. A phrase cannot be made parallel to a clause. Let's consider a few official questions to understand this point:

OG13 Question # 46

In ancient Thailand, much of the local artisans’ creative energy was expended for the creation of Buddha images and when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them.

For the sake of this discussion, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this sentence. The list is as follows:
Creative energy was expended
1: for the creation of Buddha images
2: when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them

The list above presents the tasks on which the creative energy was expended. Clearly the list is not parallel since phrase has been made parallel to clause. In fact the Official Explanation clearly states " clause introduces faulty parallelism".

OG13 Question # 13
There are several ways to build solid walls using just mud or clay, but the most extensively used method has been the forming of bricks out of mud or clay, and, after some preliminary air drying or sun drying, they are laid in the wall in mud mortar.

Once again, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this incorrect choice. And without going into too many details here, I will quote official explanation here "the active gerund phrase the forming of bricks does not fit with the passive verb phrase that follows (they are are laid)"

So essentially you cannot make a phrase parallel to a clause. I hope this addresses your confusion.

Regards,
Shraddha

Good discussion souvik101990!

The above construction is not considered correct in written English. A phrase cannot be made parallel to a clause. Let's consider a few official questions to understand this point:

OG13 Question # 46

In ancient Thailand, much of the local artisans’ creative energy was expended for the creation of Buddha images and when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them.

For the sake of this discussion, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this sentence. The list is as follows:
Creative energy was expended
1: for the creation of Buddha images
2: when they constructed and decorated the temples that enshrined them

The list above presents the tasks on which the creative energy was expended. Clearly the list is not parallel since phrase has been made parallel to clause. In fact the Official Explanation clearly states " clause introduces faulty parallelism".

OG13 Question # 13
There are several ways to build solid walls using just mud or clay, but the most extensively used method has been the forming of bricks out of mud or clay, and, after some preliminary air drying or sun drying, they are laid in the wall in mud mortar.

Once again, we will only focus on the parallelism aspect of this incorrect choice. And without going into too many details here, I will quote official explanation here "the active gerund phrase the forming of bricks does not fit with the passive verb phrase that follows (they are are laid)"

So essentially you cannot make a phrase parallel to a clause. I hope this addresses your confusion.

Regards,
Shraddha

Hi egmat

I recall reading in mahattan SC guide that two parallel clauses start with the same subordinator to remove ambiguity.

The correct option here uses "which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, "

Please correct me if i am wrong, but I believe that it should be " which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, "

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this Forum. Your post's are nothing short of Excellent