It is well known in the supermarket industry that how items are placed

You should make similar grammatical structures parallel, viz., a clause with a clause, a noun with a noun, a participle with a participle etc. A clause in passive voice and one in active voice are after all both clauses, and it is perfectly alright to make them parallel. There is no rule whatsoever in GMAT that an active voice clause cannot be parallel to a passive voice clause - the very fact that both are clauses is sufficient enough to establish valid parallelism.

Why D is grammatically incorrect has already been explained in the following post:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/it-is-well-k ... l#p1647472

Why is not B? I'm confused between B and E

Shivikaa, "is" in B is wrong because we have a plural (compound) subject. Two different things are crucial: How items are placed and how frequently the inventory turns over. Notice that in B, we also have a parallelism problem. "The frequency" doesn't match well with "how items are placed."

2Summarize all explanations:

1. The concept of parallelism solves anything here.
1.1. First of all, we need "how" in the second part to maintain parallelism in this sentence -----> A, B, C are out.
1.2. Second of all, again parallelism.
First part: how items are placed on shelves - first comes noun, second comes verb
D: how frequently is the inventory turned over - first come "is", than comes "the inventory" (and it is not even important that "turned over" comes after the noun)
E: how frequently the inventory turns over - first comes noun, second comes verb

So, only in E all parts are parallel. Verb after noun, so we have to choose E.

2. From sayantanc2k:
"When we frame a question (interrogative sentence), the verb must come before the subject.
Example: How is it done?
However when the same idea is expressed in a statement (declarative sentence), the verb follows the subject:
Example:
Declarative correct: I asked him how it is done.
Declarative wrong: I asked him how is it done."

Our case: we have to choose E.

3. From l0rrie: "If you look closely, you see that the sentence just isn't right.. Compare: how ARE placed (present) + how TURNS (present) and how ARE placed (present) + how TURNED (past)"
Again, parallelism. Present has to be with present, not with the past.

E.

AjiteshArun Why option D is wrong here? Is "are" correct in option D?

Hi Bishal123456789,

There are a couple of ways we can take option D out:

1. The placement of is is incorrect. If we ask a question (like something with a question mark after it), we change the normal order of the subject and verb (the normal order is subject first):

How long is the movie? ← Here the verb is placed before the subject.

But if we say that we asked something (like I asked X) then we have to use the normal order:

I ask them how long the movie is... ← Inside the X (how long the movie is), we stick to the normal order.

Similarly, we cannot go with:

... how frequently is the inventory turned over... ← Here the is in the verb is turned over is placed before the subject. This is incorrect.

We can see the same thing in the non-underlined part:

... how items are placed on shelves... ← This is what the sentence uses, and it's correct.
... how are items placed on shelves... ← This is incorrect.

2. Is turned over is passive, and therefore implies that someone or something is turning the inventory over. This is not very likely to be the intended meaning.

We are not allowed to change the meaning of the original sentence . I know E maintains ||ism but in original sentence it is saying turnovers and in E it's saying turns over.
So why is E going to be the answer ? Please clarify . Thanks in advance and kudos is waiting..

Hi soumya170293,

You are right in saying that turnover (a noun) is different from turn over (a verb). However, there are a couple of things we need to keep in mind here:
1. Using verbs instead of nouns doesn't always lead to a significant change in the meaning of the sentence.
2. More importantly, option A may or may not contain the intended meaning, so we shouldn't consider it to be more important than the other options.

Take a look at this post as well.

Hi AjiteshArun,
From D, I thought like inventory is turned over by someone because of the frequent change in placement of items.
but in E, inventory turns over-> means inventory by itself turns over...please clarify me on this.
I think im missing some meaning here.

Thanks in advance

Hi monikakumar.

Turn over, used like this, is really not even regular English. It is Business English. The only thing we can do here is "whitelist" this meaning of turn over. Here's a dictionary entry that may help.

To summarize: inventory turns over ~ "inventory gets sold" or "inventory sells out" (and gets replaced, because we're probably looking at a ~rate).

Ok, thank you. Got that. So the meaning here sell and replace, so the rate at which is this happening.

Yes, so:

how frequently the inventory turns over ~ "how frequently the inventory sells out (and gets replaced)"

Is it something like interrogative clause and declarative cannot be parallel?
And also if "how frequently the inventory turns over can be" were an option, would this be correct?

Hi vasanthinidumolu,

Isn't that the same as option E (the correct option)?

Does inventory turns over? If not why not go for D?

EducationAisle please could you elaborate on the usage of "that" in correct choice (E). Why hasn't "that" repeated i.e. why hasn't it been placed before the second "how" to maintain parallelism?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi MS1014,

Yes, that phrase (inventory turns over) is correct. This post explains one way to take option D out.