Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

Meaning of the sentence : Although AW published a number of essays, poetry collections and stories. Her third novel, published in 1982, bought her widest acclaim. The claim made her win both the National Book and Pulitzer Prize

(A) which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize
Three issues:
1) "which was" is redundant. The sentence can have "published in 1982" which can work as a modifier.
2) "in that it" -> we require a cause and effect relationship. "in that" provides a reason and this can work better with "Verbing or participle modifier" to show cause and effect
3) Both X AND Y -> is a idiom . "As well as" doesn't go with Both

Saurabh wrote

I don't think there's any thing wrong in point 1 and 2 as stated above and the only error option 'A' has is the 'In that' can very well give the reason of how the book won AW the widest acclaim, by winning the prizes.
Also, 'which was' is not redundant but I agree that removing it does not cause any issues.

Please correct me if I am wrong anywhere.

Hi GMATNinja

In this question, I got why (C) is the correct answer, but can you clarify why (D) is wrong? I would like to understand more about "which" usage:


Question:

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize.


(A) which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize

(B) published in 1982, bringing her the widest acclaim by winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize

(C) published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize

(D) was published in 1982 and which, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, brought her the widest acclaim

(E) was published in 1982, winning both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize, and bringing her the widest acclaim

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize.


(C) published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize


2016 GMAT Official Guide, Question 13

Hi my honorable expert RonPurewal, MartyTargetTestPrep, jennpt, AjiteshArun, ccooley, DmitryFarber, GMATNinja, egmat, generis
I'm very very confused with the use of 'modifier' in this question. I think, the use of COMMA before ''which'' is not OK. Or, we can correct this SC by using the underline up to COMMA (the 'comma' before 'which')!

Explanation for the above statement:
Here, the official correct choice (C) is:
Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Here, the "The Color Purple" is a modifier, so we can easily remove this part from the main sentence. If we take out the modifier (The Color Purple) with 2 COMMAs (the bold COMMAs) from the main part of the sentence we can get the bellow one.

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
In the above ^^ sentence, the use of COMMA (bold comma, which has been used after the word '1982' is NOT OK anymore-because, we CAN'T use a COMMA in the middle of 'subject' and 'verb' of a sentence! I mean: we can't write a sentence like "Mr. Asad, brought a glass of coffee for Mr. X"
The official sentence IS something like the above one after removing the modifier part published in 1982 (e.g., her third novel, brought her the widest acclaim.)
So, the official correct choice CAN'T be a correct answer anymore to me. I'm requesting my honorable experts to give their insight here. Your help will be appreciated.

Hello Everyone!

We've had some great discussion on this already, but let's see if we can break down HOW to answer this question in the quickest and easiest way we can! Before we dive in, here is the original question with the main differences between each option highlighted in orange:

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

(A) which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize
(B) published in 1982, bringing her the widest acclaim by winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize
(C) published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize
(D) was published in 1982 and which, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, brought her the widest acclaim
(E) was published in 1982, winning both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize, and bringing her the widest acclaim


After taking a quick glance over the options, a few key differences stand out:

1. which was published / was published / published
2. and / as well as
3. brought / bringing

The best place to start is anything that will knock out either 2 or 3 answers right away, so let's work our way backwards on our list and start with #3: brought vs. bringing. This is clearly an issue with verbs, so let's determine which one is the best to use here.

To begin, we need to find the subject and verb. Here is the original sentence:

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

If we cross out all of the modifiers (and there are a few), we're left with this:

Although Alice Walker published a number of essays, poetry collections, and stories during the 1970s, her third novel, The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

Once you take out the modifiers, which are mainly there to confuse readers, it's clear that the subject of the sentence is "The Color Purple." And what did The Color Purple do? It brought Alice Walker acclaim! Let's look over each option more carefully to figure out which ones use the right verb to match the subject. I'll still cross out any modifiers to help you see things more clearly.

(A) The Color Purple, which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize --> OK
(B) The Color Purple, published in 1982, bringing her the widest acclaim by winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize --> WRONG
("The Color Purple bringing" isn't the right verb.)
(C) The Color Purple, published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize --> OK
(D) The Color Purple, was published in 1982 and which, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, brought her the widest acclaim --> WRONG
(While this does use the correct verb "brought," it also tries to add another verb "was published" inside a modifier, which is a big no-no because it creates a comma splice! So, let's rule this one out too.)
(E) The Color Purple, was published in 1982, winning both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize, and bringing her the widest acclaim --> WRONG
(This one is wrong because it uses the incorrect "bringing" and it has a comma splice before "was published.")

We can eliminate options B, D, & E because they use the wrong verbs or have comma splices. Now that we're left with only 2 options to choose from, let's tackle #2 on our list: as well as vs. and.

Whenever we see the word "both" joining two objects, those two objects MUST be joined by the word and:

Both X and Y = CORRECT
Both X as well as Y = WRONG

(A) which was published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim in that it won both the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize
(C) published in 1982, brought her the widest acclaim, winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize


There you go - option C is the correct choice because it uses the correct verb "brought" and uses the idiom "both X and Y" correctly!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

EMPOWERgmatVerbal please explain how comma splice is created in option d and e

I don’t understand in choice C, why winning modify the book. Comma+doing should modify the entire preceding clause?

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GMATNinja, How could we know whether winning modifies the book or Alice?
Many thanks!!