Bunuel wrote:
In modern supermarkets, a customer does not have to stand in long billing queues if they have purchased ten items or less as there is a separate, dedicated billing queue for such customers.
(A) a customer does not have to stand in long billing queues if they have purchased ten items or less
(B) customers do not have to stand in long billing queues if they have purchased ten items or less
(C) a customer does not have to stand in long billing queues if purchasing ten items or lesser
(D) long queues can be avoided by customers who purchase ten or less items
(E) customers do not have to stand in long billing queues if they have purchased up to ten items
I'm no expert but here is my analysis -
Quote:
(A) a customer does not have to stand in long billing queues if they have purchased ten items or less
After reading the original sentence, 2 things stuck out to me -
i) Use of "them"
ii) Use of "less"
i)
Use of "them" -
"them" has no clear antecedent.
Good enough reason to eliminate Option (A)
ii)
Use of "less" -
Something I personally struggle to identify but "less" is used for uncountable nouns while "few" is used for countable.
Clearly, "items" are countable so we would use "few" not "less".
Another solid reason to eliminate Option (A)
We can safely eliminate
Option (A).
Quickly glancing through all the other options,
We can eliminate Option (B), (C) and (D) on similar elimination of "less" vs "few"
Answer is Option (E)