Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture

Question

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture, computers, books, and  artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, have been appraised  by the firm of Bloom and Kapoor.

A. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, have been appraised

B. artwork by artists like Chagall and Picasso, was assessed

C. artwork by artists including Chagall and Picasso, has been assessed

D. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, would be assessed

E. artwork by artists like Chagall and Picasso, were assessed

Sumi1010 · Answer

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture, computers, books, and  artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, have been appraised  by the firm of Bloom and Kapoor.

A. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, have been appraised
B. artwork by artists like Chagall and Picasso, was assessed
C. artwork by artists including Chagall and Picasso, has been assessed
D. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, would be assessed
E. artwork by artists like Chagall and Picasso, were assessed

The meaning is very clear. Let's try eliminations .
 
Indefinite pronouns such as everybody, everything, anyone etc are  singular.  
This eliminates options  A and E .

If we say "artwork by artists including Chagall and Picasso" we consider these artists as sub-group and not an example to generalise the whole. 
This is not the case here. 
Eliminate option  C.

We need "such as" to quote examples and like for metaphorical comparison. 
The artists are named as examples here. 
Hence, eliminate option  B .

IMO  D  is correct.

prateekchugh · Answer

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture, computers, books, and  artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, have been appraised  by the firm of Bloom and Kapoor.

Everything: Singular, Verb needs to be singular
For example we use: Such as not Like
Has/have been: Present Perfect: Action started in the past and its effect continue in the present.

A. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso,  have been  appraised  Incorrect

B. artwork by artists  like  Chagall and Picasso, was assessed  Incorrect

C. artwork by artists including Chagall and Picasso,  has been  assessed  Incorrect

D. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, would be assessed  Correct

E. artwork by artists  like  Chagall and Picasso,  were  assessed  Incorrect

CEdward · Answer

What's the reasoning behind why "would be assessed" in D is correct?

anshsaurabh447 · Answer

IMO, the correct answer is D.
A. EVERYTHING is an indefinite pronoun and hence it is singular. So, 'have' is incorrect.
B. 'LIKE' usage is wrong here.
C. Use of present perfect is wrong as assessment cannot be done after offering.
D. 'would be' usage is correct as offered is in past tense.
E. 'LIKE' usage is wrong here.

kntombat · Answer

AndrewN , Would love to hear your thoughts on why is C the correct answer to this question.

Saasingh · Answer

C for me.

Everything ---> Singular. (A, E eliminated).
To give examples we use such as and not like. (B eliminated)

Between C and D ,  including  and  such as  both usage is fine. So it comes down to  "has been assessed"  vs  "would be assessed" .

C. artwork by artists including Chagall and Picasso, has been assessed 
 D. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, would be assessed

Now I see no hypothetical situation here meaning wise. So it could be anything:
 - will be assessed  : Yes everything offered at auction (past), but we could be talking in present about a past event. So after the auction the assessing could happen in future.
 - has been assessed  : The assessing has been done after the auction.

But, I see no reason to use a hypothetical  WOULD . Is it the point of question whether assessing would happen or would not happen? Nope. Any simple tense could suffice here and the only option I see is "has been".

Hope it helps.

Regards,
Saakhi

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  kntombat . I pride myself on being honest and providing a candid assessment of a question, regardless of the source, and this question misses the mark for me. Sure, there are some interesting discussion points, but some of the details are off, as I will discuss below.

This is a basic subject-verb agreement error. The subject of the sentence is  everything , and, as odd as it may seem, the all-encompassing word takes a singular verb agreement. If you fell for the trap, then consider cutting out or jumping over information contained by double commas. You can spot such subject-verb agreement errors that way, often within seconds, even if the sentence is long-winded.

To be clear, nothing is wrong with the tail-end of this option. Saying,  everything was assessed  is fine. But  like  suggests a comparison, as though artists who may paint  in the style of  Chagall and Picasso have submitted work for this particular auction. If this interpretation were correct, then the sentence would be saying that Chagall and Picasso themselves had no artwork in the auction. To be honest, we really have nothing to lean on to make a proper judgment on who may have produced this artwork. Why? Because despite beliefs to the contrary,  the original sentence does  not  express the intended meaning , at least not the part that is underlined. The part of the sentence we cannot negotiate with simply tells us the following:

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture, computers, books, and... by the firm of Bloom and Kapoor.

How can I possibly tell what type of auction this may be? Just because a firm is involved, I cannot assume that the artwork on auction  must be  by famous artists. In fact, because Chagall and Picasso lived some time ago, it is quite possible that other artists within or after the Romantic or Cubist movements incorporated stylistic elements of Chagall and Picasso. Sometimes the works of these lesser-known artists can still fetch plenty of money at auction. All of this is to say that  like  in this answer choice is debatable, but by no means can we declare it incorrect.

Remember, an -ing modifier without a comma should modify the preceding noun, so here, we understand that the artwork on display is by artists  such as  Chagall and Picasso. There is no confusion whatsoever about whose work is going on the auction block. As for the present perfect  has been , again, nothing is wrong with either this construct or the simple past construct that was used in the previous answer choice. For those who may be confused, consider a parallel sentence:

The meat for sale has been inspected by the FDA, so it is deemed safe for consumption.

This sort of quality assurance statement is used to mitigate doubts in the mind of the potential buyer. Using the simple past  was  is a little weaker, suggesting that the meat may have been inspected at some point and deemed safe for consumption, but perhaps too much time has passed, and that is no longer the case. The present perfect fills in the gap in time, so a buyer feels more confident that the inspection results still hold. Likewise, in the sentence at hand, the present perfect tense would indicate to potential buyers that the firm of Bloom and Kapoor had appraised the artwork recently enough for the appraisals to be valid. There is nothing to argue against in this sentence, so it is an option to keep.

This is another perfectly legitimate sentence, but, like (B), it falls into a grey area of expressed meaning. Can we say that just because the other sentences  in the underlined portion only  convey that the artwork was or has been appraised by a certain firm, it  must  be true that such an appraisal could not be conducted after the auction? No, not at all. For all we know, appraisals were made beforehand by other, perhaps less prestigious firms or individual experts, but in order to (once again) provide buyers peace of mind, the auction house has decided to run everything by the firm of Bloom and Kapoor for a second, conclusive, opinion, post-auction.

Phew, another easy one, in light of the three above. I do not feel the need to discuss  like  again, and  were  is just as incorrect as  have  was in (A). Get rid of this answer right away.

So there you have it. The   safest   answer of the bunch is (C). But there is nothing outright wrong with either (B) or (D), which is why I merely drew attention to the more debatable elements. This is a useful question insofar as it brings up differences between  like  and  such as  or  including  (with no comma), as well as the subtle difference between the simple past tense and the present perfect tense. But you should feel confident selecting an answer based on what is  not  underlined, on the contextual clues provided in the shell of the sentence, and, for reasons discussed at length above, I feel that this question fails on the whole. There are three valid answers. One of them happens to be a little less questionable than the others. I would rate this a 5/10. The points it broaches are interesting and worth studying, but the set of answers is poor.

I hope that helps. I would be happy to discuss any contrary opinions or further questions anyone may have.

- Andrew

krndatta · Answer

DmitryFarber 
Please throw some light on the usage of "would" please

Thanks

Heicosai · Answer

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture, computers, books, and  artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso, have been appraised  by the firm of Bloom and Kapoor.

A. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso,  have been  appraised  Incorrect

B. artwork by artists  like  Chagall and Picasso, was assessed  Incorrect

C. artwork by artists including Chagall and Picasso, has been assessed  Correct

D. artwork by artists such as Chagall and Picasso,  would be  assessed  Incorrect

E. artwork by artists  like  Chagall and Picasso, were assessed  Incorrect

Reasons for eliminating options -

Option  A  - 'Everything' is singular, verb needs to be singular as well. Hence, usage of 'have' here is wrong.

Option  B  and  E  - 'Like' is used to make comparisons or create a frame of reference. 'Such as' is used when you're listing specific examples. Since the artists are just being listed, usage of 'like' is wrong.

We have eliminated grammatical errors. Now let's delve into meaning.

Option  D  - In an auction, items are first appraised and then put up for sale. The use of 'would be' implies the appraisal of items will take place after sale. That makes no sense.

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

Everything offered for sale at the auction, including office furniture

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards