In the 21st century, [u]the countries of the world will either find a

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

The primary issue in this sentence correction problem is parallelism within common constructions (not only/but also, either/or, etc.). The structure that follows the first component of the common construction – in this case “either” – must exactly match the structure that follows the second component – in this case “or”. In (A) there are numerous problems, the easiest of which is the error of agreement with the pronoun “it”. Since “it” is referring to “countries” the pronoun should be plural. Also, the sentence lacks the parallelism discussed above because what follows “or” is very different structurally from what follows “either.” (B) reads much better than (A) and eliminates the pronoun error, but is still incorrect because it lacks parallelism. The sentence needs to be: “the countries will either find….or VERB” Answer choice (B) has “or” followed by “they” and “will”, both of which are incorrect as they do not match structurally what follows “either”. (C) contains the same pronoun error as (A) so can be quickly eliminated. In (D) “countries” and “will” are put after the term “either” so this needs to be matched structurally by what follows “or”. Since this is not the case, (D) is also incorrect. Only (E) gets it right: “the countries will either find….or face”. Correct answer is (E).

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