Midway through the parade, the rodeo queen from New Mexico appeared—a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally . (A) appeared—a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally (B) appeared—a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse and waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally (C) appeared—a red sash across her chest; a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse and was waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally (D) appeared with a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat, she rode in circles on her gray horse, and was waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally (E) appeared with a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat, rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/travel/in-mauis-upcountry-where-the-paniolo-roam.html The event, the smaller of Maui’s two largest annual rodeos, was preceded by a paniolo parade through downtown Makawao, a historic ranch town surrounded by farms and pastures. Along Makawao’s antique main street, a high school band played ukuleles; two monstrously large, insectlike dune buggies were bedecked with glittering Christmas garlands; and a vintage tractor tied with candy-striped bows towed Santa and Mrs. Claus on a trailer decorated with Japanese paper lanterns. Midway through, the rodeo queen appeared — a blue sash across her chest, a tiara hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in pirouettes on her white horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally . In Makawao, a town of about 7,000 that’s the center of Maui’s close-knit Upcountry communities, she may well have. OFFICIAL EXPLANATION This sentence correction problem uses an unusual structure to “hide the correct answer” - a common tool used by testmakers that you learned about in the Advanced Verbal lesson. In (A), the phrase “a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat” is unusual because normally you would expect a conjunction between the two modifiers (here “and” so that it would read: “a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat”). However, this fairly unusual rhetorical device (called asyndeton ) is allowed and certainly something you have encountered in your reading over the years. Everything else in the sentence is fine so (A) is indeed the correct answer. However many students will eliminate it because they are not familiar with this rhetorical device. The other four answer choices all have fatal flaws and if you use the proper strategy (“only eliminate when you are sure it is wrong” and “look for the easier decision points first”) then you will get this difficult problem correct. For (B), the second clause following the semi-colon is clearly incorrect because “waving” is not used as a conjugated verb: “she rode in circles on her gray horse and waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally.” This would have to be “she rode…and waved” For (C), the multiple semi-colons are incorrect. While you can use multiple semi-colons in a sentence to link parallel elements in a series, that is not the case in this example and the usage is incorrect. In (D) and (E), you have a series of things that either lack any parallelism or are linked together improperly. In (D) the “she rode” clause is inserted without any conjunction – a classic comma splice – and is also not parallel to the other structures. In (E) there is no conjunction after “ cowboy hat,” and before “rode.” After using slash-and-burn (E) reads like this: she appeared….,rode – clearly incorrect without a conjunction. Answer is (A) .

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Midway through the parade, the rodeo queen from New Mexico appeared—a

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meghag190

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Midway through the parade, the rodeo queen from New Mexico appeared—a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally.

Doesn't 'waving at the crowd' modifies horse & not queen? It's participal phrase and should modify the closest noun.

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meghag190

Midway through the parade, the rodeo queen from New Mexico appeared—a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally.

Doesn't 'waving at the crowd' modifies horse & not queen? It's participal phrase and should modify the closest noun.

Hi Megha, (believe it or not) the comma before the Participial phrase, makes all the difference.

Such participial phrases generally modify the subject of the preceding clause (in this case she which is referring to queen).

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Participial phrases, their application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

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Midway through the parade, the rodeo queen from New Mexico appeared — a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally.

A. appeared — a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally

B. appeared — a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse and waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally

C. appeared — a red sash across her chest; a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat; she rode in circles on her gray horse and was waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally

D. appeared with a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat, she rode in circles on her gray horse, and was waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally

E. appeared with a red sash across her chest and a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat, rode in circles on her gray horse, waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally

I'm happy to help.

This is a hard question.

The phrases "a red sash across her chest" and "a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat" are absolute phrases. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/absolute-p ... -the-gmat/
These are separated by commas, do not take conjunctions, and cannot be in parallel to anything other than another absolute phrase.
(B) is incorrect, because it puts a conjunction between two absolute phrases
(C) is incorrect, because it separates absolute phrases with semicolons
(D) is a run-on sentence
(E) is also a run-on --- the two verbs in parallel, "appeared" and "rode" must be joined by a conjunction.

Choice (A) has no flaws and is the best answer. The semicolon divides her appearance from her action. The sentence has a very nice flow.

It's funny --- the only error I saw in (A) wasn't the subject of a split at all.
"....waving at the crowd as if she knew each of them personally."
It's not clear to me that the pronoun "them" has a clear antecedent. This is the type of mistake that the real GMAT often employs in incorrect answer choices ---- using a singular collective noun, here "crowd", and then a plural pronoun referring to its members. That's illegal. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-pronoun-traps/
A possible correct phrasing would be ....
" ...waving at the crowd as if she knew each person personally."

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi mikemcgarry,

I see that 'and' is missing in choice E, making the choice not parallel and hence, wrong. However, In A, there is no 'and' between components of the modifier after the hyphen (a red sash across her chest, a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat). Is the choice still correct without complying with parallelism rule?
Thanks.

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hi,

Sometimes semicolon is used to separate list items, like in the example below. Why is that wrong in this case?

The Council is comprised of ten members: three from Sydney, Australia; four from Auckland, New Zealand; two from Suva, Fiji; and one from Honiara, Solomon Islands

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vishthedish

Sometimes semicolon is used to separate list items, like in the example below. Why is that wrong in this case?

Hi vishthedish,

We normally don't use a semicolon to separate the items of a list unless using commas would reduce clarity. But if you're looking at option C, the three elements after the dash aren't parallel.

1. a red sash across her chest ← This is an absolute phrase.

2. a crown hugging the band of her cowboy hat ← This is also an absolute phrase.

3. she rode in circles on her gray horse and was... ← This is a clause (subject-verb combination).

In other words, X; Y; Z looks like a list of three items (even though there's no and). X, Y; ABC is better in this case. It helps the reader understand that ABC is separate from X and Y.

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