viswakailash wrote:
In the OA, the lines of competition and the Internet Industry are compared. I went with B as the comparison seemed perfect. please
Neither choice (A) nor choice (B) is ideal.
In (A), the use of the pronoun "they" to refer to "lines of competition" is somehow a little off, as, ideally, "they" would refer to a specific set of lines of competition, but, in this case, "they" refers to lines of competition in general in the Internet industry without that reference's being made clear.
An analogous sentence is, "Whereas people speak Chinese in China, in the United States they speak English." What people does "they" refer to exactly?
In (B), "they" seems to refer to "the lines of competition," but "the lines of competition" mentioned are those in the more established industries, not in the Internet industry. So, in a sense, (B) conveys that "the lines of competition ... in the industries that are more established" are in the Internet industry.
Now, regarding the fact that the comparison in (A) does not line up perfectly, in (A), the use of "whereas" rather than, for instance,"unlike," indicates that we are dealing, not with a strict comparison, but with two contrasting clauses. So, the comparison does not have to line up perfectly. The two clauses have merely to present a contrast.
The comparison in (B) does seem to line up a little better than does the comparison in (A), but probably was written to sound better than (A) in order to tempt people who don't notice the key difference between the two choices.
The key difference between the two choices and the clearest reason to select (A) over (B) is that the connection between choice (B) and the non-underlined portion of the sentence is flawed, whereas choice (A) works with the non-underlined portion of the sentence, as has been discussed in previous posts.