ashmit99 wrote:
gmataspirant2009 wrote:
Consumers may not think of household cleaning products to be hazardous substances, but many of them can be harmful to health, especially if they are used improperly.
(D) A consumer may not think of household cleaning products as
(E) Household cleaning products may not be thought of, by consumers, as
I was able to reject option A, B & C. But I selected E because of the following reasons:
1. The pronouns- them & they can refer to the subject of the previous clause.
2. The subject in E is "Household cleaning products". So, this is nice because the sentence revolves around the topic of products. I rejected D because there was a bit of less emphasis on "products". And I felt that there was more emphasis on "products" in E.
If I consider the following examples:
1. The dispatcher is notifying the police that 3 prisoners have escaped.
2. Police are being notified that 3 prisoners have escaped.
I think in this case 2nd one is better even if it is in passive voice because the subject in the 2nd sentence is "police", which is the main focus.
So following the same logic, I selected E. Please help me understand where am I faltering?
About your point #1, there is no pronoun ambiguity in answer D, because "consumer" is singular in D.
About your point #2, I agree with your general philosophy about passive voice: when the object of a verb is the true 'topic' of the sentence, passive voice can be preferable to active voice. But I'd suggest being very careful applying that principle to GMAT SC questions. In this question, it's perfectly reasonable to think of the consumers as the "topic" of the sentence, since the consumers are the ones facing the hazards from cleaning products. Really, as soon as a sentence uses passive voice, but also identifies the subject (in E, it says "may not be thought of, *by consumers*, ...") it's almost always going to be preferable to rephrase the sentence in an active way. It's most often true when passive voice is preferable to active voice that the subject can be omitted altogether ("Littering laws were enacted in 1850", for example, is a good passive sentence). Notice that your two example sentences aren't directly comparable to answers D and E in this question, for this very reason. To make a fair comparison, you'd need to identify the subject in both of your examples:
1. The dispatcher is notifying the police that 3 prisoners have escaped.
2. Police are being notified, *by the dispatcher*, that 3 prisoners have escaped.
and now I think your sentence #1 is preferable to your sentence #2 (though in your original versions, I prefer sentence #2).
In general on the GMAT, if you're going to pick an answer that uses a passive construction, you'll want to have a very compelling justification for making that choice, and I don't find one in this question. It's probably true that if you're ever debating between two otherwise correct answer choices, and the only difference between them is that one is active and the other passive, that you'll be right the considerable majority of the time if you pick the active answer.
10 Jan 2021, 00:21
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