rencewigg
Hello Andrew,
Thanks for the clarification.
Original: B. In order to occupy unused city-owned property, the drop-off centers will be such a great distance from the town's population centers as to discourage use.
My version of the same: B. In order to occupy unused city-owned property, the drop-off centers will be at a great distance from the town's population centers as to discourage use.
I think that the preposition "at" is missing and the determiner "such" should not be there.
Kindly let me know if this correction of the choice is valid.
Your grammatical understanding,
rencewigg, is much more advanced than I had suspected from your first message. I thought you were having trouble understanding the sentence, not with missing prepositions and present determiners. The original sentence is fine as is:
such a great distance from... as to discourage works on its own, similar to saying,
so great a distance from... as to discourage. In your version, the replacement of
such with
at a could work, but then you have a problem with
as to. To be clear,
at a great distance from... as to discourage is
incorrect without the very word you were eager to cut,
such. It would need to be
at such a great distance from to work, but then we run into redundancy issues between
such and
great. Getting back to your sentence, though, you would need to replace
as to in a way similar to the following:
In order to occupy unused city-owned property, the drop-off centers will be at a great distance from the town's population centers
and thus discourage use.
I am generally not a fan of tinkering with the given sentences too much, since they are presented as such for a reason, and our task is only to find the best option among the five. Still, I hope this dialogue has proven worthwhile for you. As always, good luck with your studies.
- Andrew