Birds preen themselves to clean and water proof their feathers, mainta

Question

Birds preen themselves to clean and waterproof their feathers,  maintaining their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat. 
 
A. maintaining their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat. 
 
B. to maintain their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat 
 
C. to maintain their general health and to keep them smooth and neat. 
 
D. keeping them smooth and neat and to maintain their general health. 
 
E. for maintaining their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat.

justbegan · Answer

i could not figure out the reason for D being the right answer. can anyone explain it to me? and yes, it would be great if source is specified.

Makhabbat · Answer

Hello! I chose the right answer but I am not sure why not E, please help

Oppenheimer1945 · Answer

"to maintain" is preferred.

To maintain + To keep is correct parallelism.

Option C

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ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  Makhabbat ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, Option C is superior to E because for referring to the intent or purpose of an action ("preen themselves" in this case) the infinitive verb form ("to + base form of verb" - "to + maintain" and "to + keep" in this case) is preferred over the present participle ("verb+ing" - "maintaining" and "keeping" in this case).

To understand the concept of "Infinitives" versus "Present Participles" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbr_XRGL3js

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

AmrAElkholy · Answer

Answer C is perfect, but'Comma' before the last 'AND' is missing, this punctuation is confused me

Posted from my mobile device

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  AmrAElkholy ,

We hope this finds you well.

You are correct that there should be a comma before "and", as it introduces the last element of a list with more than three elements; the omission of the comma was likely an error.

However, it should be noted that since none of the other answer choices include a comma before the "and" either, this factor cannot be used to eliminate any of them; in eliminating SC answer choices, we recommend first focusing on where the answer choices differ from one another.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Mizar18 · Answer

A. maintaining their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat.

parallelism participial noun vs prep phrase, so not parallel
 
B. to maintain their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat

prep phrases starting with to vs for, so not parallel
 
C. to maintain their general health and to keep them smooth and neat.

looks good
  
D. keeping them smooth and neat and to maintain their general health.

similar to A) 
 
E. for maintaining their general health and for keeping them smooth and neat.

should we want to know the "what for" aspect or to denote intention? clearly the latter one, so that is why C is better

Answer is C

Birds preen themselves to clean and water proof their feathers, mainta

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Birds preen themselves to clean and water proof their feathers, mainta

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