During the first nine months of 1979, textbook publishers incurred sub

(A) funding for instructional material, never were
- Correct ("Never" is an adverb and is can act both as a pre modifier and as a post modifier. There is nothing wrong in writing "never were")
(B) funding for instructional material, never was
-“ products” are plural. Hence the very should be “were” and not “was”. Hence incorrect
(C) funding, the instructional material, was never
-“ products” are plural. Hence the very should be “were” and not “was”. Hence incorrect
(D) funding for instructional material, the products were never
- “that” already referring to “products”. Hence we don’t require “the products”. Hence incorrect
(E) funding, they were never
-“They” has no clear referent. Hence incorrect

The subject in this question is the term "products", which is plural. Thus B& C can be eliminated straightaway. D creates a repetition using the subject again, thus redundancy applies here, and in E, the usage of "they"is clearly unacceptable. This leaves the option A as our answer. I can understand that the conventional usage of "were never" can create a conflict with the used "never were". This is nothing but a trap.

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Hi All,

When a sentence includes an "intervening phrase", as this SC does, you should be able to "pull out" that intervening phrase and still have a complete, grammatically-accurate sentence. The first sentence in my post serves as an example. The phrase "....,as this SC does,...." is the intervening phrase. Pull it out and you still have a complete sentence.

Here, the intervening phrase begins with ", due to a decline in public....." and ends with the next comma. If we pull out that phrase, we're left with....

"During the first nine months of 1979, textbook publishers incurred substantial costs for creating products that....." We need an answer that grammatically completes this sentence. Since "products" is plural, we need a plural verb - in this case "were." Eliminate B and C.

Since the subject ("products") is clearly defined, we don't need another reference to it (so there's no need to include the word "products" again and there's no need for a pronoun). Eliminate D and E.

Final Answer:

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Is E completely wrong or A is just a better option?

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