sagarsabnis
Constance Horner, chief of the United States government’s personnel agency, has recommended that the use of any dangerous or illegal drug in the five years prior to application for a job be grounds for not hiring an applicant.
(A) the use of any dangerous or illegal drug in the five years prior to application for a job be grounds for not hiring an applicant
(B) any dangerous or illegal drug, if used in the five years prior to applying for a job, should be grounds for not hiring an applicant
(C) an applicant’s use of any dangerous or illegal drug in the five years prior to application for a job be grounds not to hire them
(D) an applicant’s use of any dangerous or illegal drug in the five years prior to applying for a job are grounds that they not be hired
(E) for five years prior to applying for a job, an applicant’s use of any dangerous or illegal drug be grounds for not hiring them
whats wrong in B???
The answer is A.
From the statement we can clearly make out that its a case of command subjunctive, which calls for the use of "that" and "be".
B- Incorrect: Never use "should" in command subjunctive.
C- Incorrect: Disagreement between pronoun and number. The pronoun should be "his or her".
D- Incorrect: Same as C. The pronoun "they" is outright wrong in this context.
E- Incorrect: Same as C, and D. The use of the pronoun "them" is wrong.
A correctly maintains the command subjunctive form.
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To actually keep in sync and put the command subjunctive force to peace, we have to use the verb form in its most simple form. "Hiring" is incorrect here and should be replaced with Hire.
Undoubtedly the C option which is the only one which suffices to this prerequisite is also incorrect due to wrong pronoun reference.