Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and

Official Explanation

Sentence structure of Original Sentence

• Clause 1 - Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and
• Clause 2 - which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly,
• Clause 1 (contd.) - lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation’s ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

Meaning of Original Sentence

• The sentence is about the ski and snowboarding industry.
• Certain characteristics of industry presented - # of centers and # people employed.
• This industry lost specific amount of money in revenue between 2000 and 2010.
• The reason for the loss in revenue has been specified as – warming trend that forces the ski areas to open late or close early.

Errors in the Original Sentence

• Clause 1 - Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and
• Clause 2 - which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly,
• Clause 1 (contd.) - lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation’s ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

1: Parallelism error – “with” prepositional phrase modifier is not parallel to “which” relative clause modifier. Both should be either relative clause modifier or prepositional phrase modifier.

Answer Choice Analysis

A. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost
Parallelism Error as discussed above.

B. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly between 2000 and 2010, lost
Modifier Error – Highlighted modifier does not modify the action “lost”. It now implies that 187000 people were employed between the given time period. This results in change in meaning of the sentence.
Note that the parallelism error in choice A has been corrected. Both are phrase modifiers now. One is prepositional phrase modifier and the other is verb-ing modifier.

C. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
SV Error – The main clause does not contain any verb. The subject “ski and snowboarding industry” does not have a verb. The verb “lost” in original sentence has been changed to non-verb form “losing”.

D. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry between 2000 and 2010, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
SV Error – As in choice C.
Modifier Error – The highlighted modifier instead of modifying the verb – lost - modifies the industry. It somehow implies that the sentence is about ski and snowboarding industry that existed between 2000 and 2010. This does not make sense. As such logically there is only one ski and snowboarding industry and not about the industry that was between a certain time period.

E. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost, between 2000 and 2010,
Correct Choice

Take Away

1: Clause entity cannot be parallel to a phrase entity. There can be more than one ways to correct such a list. Write both in either phrase form or clause form.
2: Modifiers should be placed appropriately to modify the intended entity.

Regards,
Shraddha