In 1850 Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a

In 1850 Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women’s property laws.

A. arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
B. arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women
C. a treatise that advocates women’s equal political and legal rights
D. a treatise advocating women’s equal political and legal rights
E. a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

egmat CAn u help in this question. Is use of "arguing in a treatise for women" is correct here??

In 1850 Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women’s property laws.

A. arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
B. arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women
C. a treatise that advocates women’s equal political and legal rights
D. a treatise advocating women’s equal political and legal rights
E. a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

Hello experts,

Do you thing the verb-ing modifier in option D is incorrect? I thought that's an error too in addition to the other error. I marked verb-ing as an error because with the use of "advocating", it seems like the treatise is the doer of action and is advocating. But can the treatise advocate? Or do you think the use is okay?


Thank you in advance!

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja EducationAisle AndrewN AjiteshArun

a book/a paper/a treatise can certainly suggest/argue etc. It is common, acceptable usage and we don't need to take it literally.

Do you thing the verb-ing modifier in option D is incorrect? I thought that's an error too in addition to the other error. I marked verb-ing as an error because with the use of "advocating", it seems like the treatise is the doer of action and is advocating. But can the treatise advocate? Or do you think the use is okay?

In option E, the verbs "argued" and "changes" are creating confusion for me. Isn't it that both verbs need to be either of present or past tense?

Hello experts,

Do you thing the verb-ing modifier in option D is incorrect? I thought that's an error too in addition to the other error. I marked verb-ing as an error because with the use of "advocating", it seems like the treatise is the doer of action and is advocating. But can the treatise advocate? Or do you think the use is okay?


Thank you in advance!

VeritasKarishma GMATNinja EducationAisle AndrewN AjiteshArun

See the non-underlined part:

In 1850 Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, ... and for changes in the married women’s property laws.

So whatever comes before 'and' is something else the treatise argues for. The two should be parallel.
So we are between (B) and (E).

(B) is incorrect because 'a treatise' is not connected to 'Discourse on Women' and the reader is left wondering whether they are the same. The link is not clear.

(E) clearly tells us that 'Discourse on Women' is the treatise and what it does.

Also, a book/a paper/a treatise can certainly suggest/argue etc. It is common, acceptable usage and we don't need to take it literally.

Can you explain how can a treatise ARGUE? Lucretia published something. Why did she publish? To argue..
This is my understanding and eliminated E because I felt treatise itself cannot argue.

Hi VeritasKarishma - I know there are other mistakes but can A and B be eliminated for Comma + Arguing specifically ?

For example - if I were to say the following

Sam published his book, arguing for X and for Y.

Isn't this sentence in red I made up saying -- Sam published the book. In the book, Sam is arguing for X and Sam is arguing for Y (in the book)

Or would the sentence in red NOT convey my inteded meaning.

Hello Everyone!

Let's take a closer look at this question and determine the best way to tackle it! Before we dive in, here is the original question with the major differences in each option highlighted in orange:

In 1850 Lucretia Mott published her Discourse on Women, arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women’s property laws.

A. arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
B. arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women
C. a treatise that advocates women’s equal political and legal rights
D. a treatise advocating women’s equal political and legal rights
E. a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

After a quick glance over the options, we see a couple things we can focus on:

1. "arguing in a treatise" vs. "a treatise" (Modifiers)
2. "for women..." / "for equal..." / "women's equal..." (Parallelism)

Let's start with #1 on our list: modifiers! We know that the modifier should be modifying "Discourse on Women." What is Discourse on Women? A treatise! So the modifier that comes directly after the title should tell us what it is - it's a treatise, not an argument! Let's see how the options break down:

A. arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
B. arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women
C. a treatise that advocates women’s equal political and legal rights
D. a treatise advocating women’s equal political and legal rights
E. a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women

We can eliminate options A & B because they are trying to make the modifier pair up with Mott and not the title of the treatise itself, which is what it should be modifying!

Now that we're left with 3 options, let's move on to #2: parallelism! There are 2 things that the treatise argues for:

1. equal political and legal rights for women
2. changes in married women's property laws

BOTH items need to be written using parallel structure. This means they need to use similar verb tenses, structure, wording, etc. Let's see which of the remaining options uses parallel structure. To make this easier to spot, I've added in the rest of the sentence so you can clearly see both items that need to be parallel:

C. a treatise that advocates women’s equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women’s property laws. --> NOT PARALLEL
D. a treatise advocating women’s equal political and legal rights and for changes in the married women’s property laws. --> NOT PARALLEL
E. a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women and for changes in the married women’s property laws. --> PARALLEL

There you have it - option E is the correct choice! The modifier clearly refers to the right thing, and it uses parallel structure!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

I am confused on the parallelism structure. Isn't that the 2nd parallel element in Option E is a verb phrase as it uses ''changes" whereas 1st parallel element is not a verb phrase , so how it could be said to be parallel? Please help clarify this doubt.

I am confused on the parallelism structure. Isn't that the 2nd parallel element in Option E is a verb phrase as it uses ''changes" whereas 1st parallel element is not a verb phrase , so how it could be said to be parallel? Please help clarify this doubt.