By attracting such prominent writers as Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wil

Question

By attracting such prominent writers as Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder,  Ezra Pound, and acting  as a meeting place for so many other Left Bank artists, Gertrude Stein's salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus gained a permanent place in literary history.

A) Ezra Pound, and acting
B) Ezra Pound, and by acting
C) and Ezra Pound, and by acting 
D) and Ezra Pound, acting
E) and Ezra Pound, and acting

I feel the OA is not correct.

payalkhndlwl · Answer

Shouldn't the OA be E? By attracting is still parallel to 'and (by) acting'.

The format is By X and Y.

Mkrishnabdrr · Answer

By attracting  ....  and   by acting

The first  by  introduces dependent clause
the second  by  again introduces dependent clause
 and  joins the two dependent clauses as it a dependent clause marker

payalkhndlwl · Answer

Where is independent clause in this sentence? How can we have a sentence with two dependent clause?

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  payalkhndlwl ,

The independent clause is in the non-underlined portion:

...  Gertrude Stein's  salon  at 27 Rue de Fleurus   gained  a permanent place in literary history.

Adi88 · Answer

The OA is correct. I hope we understand the fight for correct answer is between "C" and "E". But if we see closely, we observe that there are two dependent clauses separated by "Comma + and", so "By" in the beginning of Dep Clause 1 is not applicable to Dep Clause 2.

By doing X, and by removing Y, Wallasch did Z.

and we re want to remove comma then the structure of sentence will change to,

By doing X and removing Y, Walter did Z.

Kudos if you like ! or lets discuss on correctness of it.

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

A:  This answer choice fails to connect "Ezra Pound", the final element of a list, with the rest of the list with the word "and"; the correct form of the oxford comma, used to connect the final element of a list, is "and + comma". Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

B:  This answer choice repeats the error seen in Option A. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

C:  This answer choice conveys the intended meaning of the sentence, correctly utilizes the oxford comma, and maintains parallelism. Thus, this answer choice is correct.

D:  This answer choice incorrectly modifies the noun "Ezra Pound", rather than the noun "Gertrude Stein's salon", with the phrase "acting as a meeting place...".Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

E:  This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between the verbs "By attracting" and "acting"; as the first two clauses of this sentence are dependent clauses, "By" will not automatically apply to the verb "acting" because "acting" is a part of the second dependent clause. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Hence, C is the best answer choice.

To understand the concept of "Oxford Comma on GMAT", you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORKzVN0LEo8

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

VerbalBot · Answer

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By attracting such prominent writers as Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wil

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

By attracting such prominent writers as Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wil

Prep Toolkit

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