Many writers of modern English have acquired careless habits that dama

Many writers of modern English have acquired ..., but they can break these habits if they are willing .....trouble.
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In choice C, the subjects are absolutely parallel and same across the structure, therefore the most perfect choice. I hope the reasoning should be enough. Please let me know, if any flaw in this.

C is the best candidate.

Many writers (plural) have acquired habits....but they can break these habits....

According to some previous posts there is ambiguity in they.
but they can break these habits

Now they cannot refer to habits as habits cannot break habits so the only other possibility is they refer to Writers.

Now in the remaining portion:
if they are willing to take the necessary trouble.

Here also they can refer to writers only.

As there is no ambiguity sentence construction seems reasonable. However the better construction would have been:

Many writers of modern English have acquired careless habits that damage the clarity of their prose, but the writers can break these habits if these writers are willing to take the necessary trouble.

I hope it makes sense now.

(A) but these habits can be broken > Passive
(B) but these habits are breakable > Passive
(C) but they can break these habits
(D) which can be broken
(E) except that can be broken

Many writers of modern English have acquired careless habits that damage the clarity of their prose, but these habits can be broken if they are willing to take the necessary trouble.
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(A) but these habits can be broken
In this case it is not clear to what noun does "they" (that comes after underlined part) refer to. Is it "writers" or "habits", we understand that it is "writers", but still. And passive.

(B) but these habits are breakable
Same as in A

(C) but they can break these habits
Good. The first "they", and the second one refer to "writers". And active.

(D) which can be broken
"which" modifies the last noun ("prose" in our case), but "prose can be broken" makes no sense

(E) except that can be broken
No sense at all

IMO all the options are incorrect because 'they' in all the options are ambiguous. SC experts please help.

In choice A it reads as if they refers to habits (which is incorrect). Choice C corrects ambiguity error and uses active voice which GMAT prefers.

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subject should be the same in both dependent clause and independent clause. this is the point tested.

if we choose choice A, "they " in "they are willing" will refer to "habits". this makes no sense.

tbh, you really can only approach this answer by passive/active voice. Since gmat prefers active voice, we should choose C.

Many people argue that we have to declare "they" in underlined part, or the other "they" in non-underlined part would not make sense. However, that doesn't seem true to me. Remember, they usually refer to the subject the sentence first (in this case, writers). If that doesn't make logical sense, then we move to the next plural noun that makes logical sense. Therefore, even if we don't have "they" in the underlined part, the other "they" in the non-underlined part would still make sense since it refers to "writers" and not anything else.

EducationAisle please could you provide a grammatical reason as to why (C) > (A)

Hi Hoozan, couple of things in A, that tilt the favor against it:

1) these habits can be broken is not explicitly stating who can break these habits. C is clearer in this respect, since it says that they (writers) can break these habits.

2) they (subject pronoun) in A grammatically seems to refer to these habits (subject noun of the previous clause), while they is logically intended to refer to writers.

[quote="spriya"]Many writers of modern English have acquired careless habits that damage the clarity of their prose, but these habits can be broken if they are willing to take the necessary trouble.

(A) but these habits can be broken- The they in the non-underlined part after broken is ambiguous. It should not point to habits.
(B) but these habits are breakable- The they in the non-underlined part after broken is ambiguous. It should not point to habits.
(C) but they can break these habits- Clear and concise
(D) which can be broken- usage of which is incorrect here as it can point to prose or clarity-both of which are wrong
(E) except that can be broken- clearly wrong

The correct answer is C. I'm pretty sure. After my English teacher gave me many worksheets to solve, I think I became a pro.

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