This is part of why I keep ranting about sticking with official materials for verbal: it's impossible for test-prep companies to accurately mimic the style of GMAT verbal.

With all due respect to the smart folks at Kaplan, it looks like they missed the mark on this one. There's nothing wrong with the sentence you cited, since it seems to compare "the compounds identified by MBR" (whatever the heck "MBR" might be) to "[the compounds] identified by MR." No problem at all there.

So don't lose any sleep over this!
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The cat, which is very old, took a nap.
The cat that is very old needs to see the vet today.
The relative pronoun "which" is used for non-essential information set off by commas; "that" is used for essential information and requires no additional punctuation.

Thank you, it is very helpful.

Hi GMATNinja

Please can you help me with this question? This is a question from gmatclub test (V11-14) but my doubt is regarding the use of "account for", which, as far as I know, can be used as "to be responsible for". Having said so, why is answer B incorrect?

The latest investigation proves that either the building-owner or his tenants are to be accounted for yesterday’s fire that burnt as long as or longer than four hours.

A. to be accounted for yesterday’s fire that burnt as long as or longer than
B. accounted for yesterday’s fire, which burnt at least as long as
C. held accountable for yesterday’s fire, which burnt longer or as long as
D. accountable for yesterday’s fire, which burnt at least as long as
E. to be held accountable for yesterday’s fire that burnt longer than or at least as long as
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Dear GMATNinja,
I request your suggestion for Idioms study material. I will require meaning and examples both. Though I have gone through Aristotle SC Grail and certain links/Excel file on GMATclub, I am not able to find study idioms with both meaning and examples.

Thanks in advance

Can you please guide on how to approach Adjective-Adverb Questions. I am always confused whenever questions like (supposed vs supposedly, quickly vs more quickly type) pops up..

You can have a look over Manhattan IDIOM List. They do give examples.

Can I also eliminate option C for using 'as a return on'?

Hi, Charles,

The investigations of many psychologists and anthropologists support the generalization of there being little that is a significant difference in the underlying mental processes manifested by people from different cultures.

(A) of there being little that is a significant difference
(B) of there being little that is significantly different
(C) of little that is significantly different
(D) that there is little that is significantly different
(E) that there is little of significant differences

How to explain C is not correct here? The answer is D.

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Aristotle Sentence Correction : Comparison Practice drill :

6. John's shirt, like that of his brother's, is pink in color.

What is the error in the sentence ?

Mizar18, it pains me to admit that I spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about this one. And I think you're correct: "account for" can also mean "to be responsible for." For example:

"Burling accounted for three of his club's four goals in the victory over DC United."

Reasonable usage, right? In this case, "accounted for" pretty much does mean "to be responsible for."

We could argue that because the sentence is specifically assigning blame ("the investigation proves that..."), "accountable for" is the clearer idiom. But the better argument is probably that the question is flawed, and needs to be changed.

While we're on the topic of idioms...


Most people really don't want to hear this, but studying idioms is rarely a great strategy for improving your SC score, since there are more than 25,000 idioms in English -- and any of them are fair game on the GMAT. It's rare that idioms are an unavoidable, deciding factor on official SC questions, though it does happen occasionally. So memorizing a few hundred idioms probably isn't the best way to improve your SC score.

Much more on idioms in this article. Not a crowd-pleaser, but it's honest.
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Yes, I suppose you could. It only really makes sense to use the phrase "a return on" if we're talking about investments of some sort. So it wouldn't make sense to say that the entertainment is "a return on food, drink, and lodging", since the food, drink, and lodging aren't investments made for the purpose of earning "a return."

But I would be absolutely floored if you see that specific issue again in an official SC question.

I hope this helps!
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I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but I'll give it a shot.

You probably understand the basics already: adjectives can only modify nouns, while adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. So in general, if you have to choose between an adjective ("recent", for example) and an adverb ("recently"), the task is to figure out what the modifier is trying to describe.

Here are some fragments of this official question:

• "recent extended sales slump" -- because "recent" is an adjective (no "-ly" on the end), it must modify the noun "sales slump." And that's fine: the phrase is just telling us that the sales slump happened in the not-too-distant past.
• "recently extended sales slump" -- now, "recently" is an adverb. So it can't modify the noun "sales slump" anymore. Instead, it modifies the adjective "extended". So now the phrase is saying that the sales slump was extended in the not-too-distant past. That's not necessarily wrong, but it's a very different meaning than the phrase "recent extended sales slump."

So again, it's all context-dependent, and when you see the same modifier in two different forms (as an adverb in some answer choices, but as an adjective in others), your job is to see if one form of the modifier creates an illogical meaning somehow.

I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I hope this helps a bit!
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Here's a different set of examples that should help you figure out the Aristotle question:

1. "The debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than Japan." -- Nonsense, right? It's literally saying that the debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than the nation of Japan. Not cool.
2. "The debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than that of Japan." -- Much better: "that" is a singular pronoun that refers back to "the debt-GDP ratio." So the comparison makes sense now: "the debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than [the debt-GDP ratio] of Japan." Cool. (More on the GMAT's many uses of "that" in this article and this video.)
3. "The debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than Japan's." -- I guess this is OK, though it's less elegant than #2. We have to assume that "Japan's" means "Japan's debt-GDP ratio", and that seems reasonable enough.
4. "The debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than that of Japan's." -- OK, now we've gone too far. "That" refers to "debt-GDP ratio" again, and if we assume that "Japan's" means "Japan's debt-GDP ratio", then we get a redundant, nonsensical mess: "The debt-GDP ratio of Greece is lower than the debt-GDP ratio of Japan's debt-GDP ratio." Huh?

You'll find similar issues in this GMATPrep question or this one.

I hope this helps!
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Dear GMATNinja,

Can you clarify the usage of "versus" in GMAT tests?

I have never seen any note about "versus" usage in any theoretical or practical posts anywhere.

Funny enough, but just before the real exam I read somewhere in the Forum that GMAT wouldn't have any questions with "versus", but on the test I got an SC questions with 2 answers having "versus" and 3 answers having "compared to"...

Can you please explain the usage of "versus" for comparisons on GMAT.

Thanks

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Full disclosure: I have never given a moment's thought to the word "versus" in nearly two decades of teaching the GMAT. (But I HAVE thought about the fact that the previous sentence makes me feel old. )

For starters, there are about 170,000 words and 25,000 idioms in English, and any of them are fair game. Sure, we've never seen both "versus" and "compared to" in a published GMAT question, but there's no reason why that couldn't happen.

More importantly: it's rare that an idiom is an unavoidable, deciding factor in a GMAT question. It happens occasionally, but in general, the best approach is to try to find other decision points. On most questions, you'll be able to avoid the idiom -- and if you can't, that stinks, but it's not likely that you'll want to memorize 25,000 idioms, either. (More on all of that in this article.) On the question you saw on the exam, odds are good that the real issue was the logic of the comparison -- and not the difference between "versus" and "compared to."

Beyond that, the difference between "versus" and "compared to" depends entirely on the context. A few thoughts:

• "Versus" can be used to indicate two entities that are competing or battling in some way ("Liverpool versus Arsenal", or court cases such as "Roe versus Wade"); "compared to" would make no sense in these situations.
• If you're actually comparing two people, it would be weird to use "versus": "I look like a sumo wrestler compared to my slender friend Mike" would make sense, and would just indicate that I look much chubbier than Mike; "I look like a sumo wrestler versus my slender friend Mike" suggests that we're actually wrestling, and that would be soooooo awkward, on so many levels.

But then there are cases when it's really hard to define when to use "versus" and when to use "compared to":

• "I weighed the relative merits of a burrito versus a plate of bhindi masala before wisely choosing to eat both." Seems fine, right? In this context, "versus" seems to express a contrast or comparison of some sort.
• "A deep-fried burrito is healthy compared to a deep-fried stick of butter." Also seems fine, right? "Compared to" is also expressing a contrast or comparison here.

And I think we'll get ourselves into one heck of an endless mess if we try to invent rules for why we would use "versus" in the first sentence, but "compared to" in the second. So don't overthink it too much.

I hope this helps a bit!
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Hey Gmatninja,

Was wondering if you could provide some clarity on this question:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/government-o ... 03784.html

I got as far as narrowing down the the choices to A and D but the two 'had's in the sentence threw me off...

My usual strategy for 'had' is try and look for some kind of time aspect in the sentence with the 'had' verb occurring first. Otherwise I'll pick had if it doesn't conform if I am confident other answers are wrong.

In this case though, A, at least by ear, sounds fine...

Yeah, you have the right idea, sefwow: if you see "had + verb" (known as past perfect if you like jargon), the action in that tense needs to logically occur before some other action -- or time marker -- in the past. More on that general idea in this video.

Here are (A) and (D) again:

The phrase "... intermittent showers that had fallen..." isn't underlined, and it's in past perfect tense -- so it has to come before some other action or event or marker in the past. We have "government officials announced...", and that's a later action in the past. So far, we're in good shape.

Now, the question is whether "... no appreciable increase in the level of the river resulted..." should be in simple past ("resulted", in (A)) or past perfect ("had resulted", in (D)). It seems to me that the past perfect "had resulted" makes more sense, since it seems reasonable that rivers would rise pretty much at the same time as the rain showers. And since the showers are in past perfect ("intermittent showers that had fallen"), my first thought is that we'd want to say that "no appreciable increase... had resulted..."

Of course, if you happen to know that rivers often rise AFTER rain, then maybe you could argue that the simple past, "resulted," is also fine. Oooh... tricky!

So hey, I'd personally vote for past perfect here, but there's a bit of a grey area.

And guess what: the GMAT has made it a non-issue! There's another difference between (A) and (D): "appreciative" (in (A)) means "to be grateful for something." I don't think the increase in the river level is particularly grateful for anything. In (D), we have "appreciable", which basically means "significant." Much better.

So yes, the GMAT loves to test past perfect tense, but in this case, they've left us with some ambiguity about which tense is better. But as usual, they've given us a more decisive issue to focus on.

I hope this helps!
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"which" can also refer to essential information. there are certain examples I can't recall.
they were like this-
"The house for which I yearn belongs to Ted" (I read something like this in Manhattan)

in this "which" is providing an essential information... this part kind of confuses me, when to use "which" for essential and when to use "that" for essential..
any help on the topic will be appreciated.
thanks