During the 1970's it became clear that going to the courts was far mor

What follows the word 'clear' must be a clause that explains 'what is actually being considered as clear'. Hence, we need to have a 'that' clause. Since (D) and (E) are not 'that' clauses, we can eliminate (D) and (E)


We have an infinitive verb phrase that succeeds the underline portion. Hence, the underlined portion must contain an infinitive verb phrase as well.

(A) does not have an infinitive verb phrase. Hence, eliminate (A)

In (C), we have ".... the courts were more efficient to go to than to go to voters.." - this does not make any sense. Hence, eliminate (C)

In (B), we do have an infinitive verb phrase. This sentence has no error. Hence, (B) is the right answer choice.

During the 1970's it became clear that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal than to go to the voters or work through Congress.

The parallelism and comparison tested here is "X was far more efficient than Y". So we should look for answer option that either does "going to the courts.... going to the voters" or does "to go to the courts ... to go to the voters" , but not mix them up. On closer view, only B complies with that structure. Hence, B is the correct answer.


During the 1970's it became clear that for people who sought a new social or political goal, it was far more efficient to go to the courts than to go to the voters or work through Congress.

During the 1970's it became clear that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal than to go to the voters or work through Congress.


A. that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal: parallelism error, the sentence mentions "to go to voters" but underline part says going to courts

B. that for people who sought a new social or political goal, it was far more efficient to go to the courts: correct options as no error of parallelism

C. that for people seeking a new social or political goal the courts were far more efficient to go to: comaprision error, going to court may be efficient but the court cannot be efficent to go to

D. for people seeking a new social or political goal, going to the courts was far more efficient: same error as A

E. for people who sought a new social or political goal, the courts were far more efficient: error in camparision, courts being comapred to going to voters

During the 1970's it became clear that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal than to go to the voters or work through Congress.

* Subject verb pair [ "it became" ; "going to the courts was" ; "who sought"] - correct
* Tense form [ Past tense ] - conveys intended meaning
* If -then condition - Not used
* Subjunctive Verb - Not used
* Pronoun [ "it" & "who" ] - used appropriately
* Modifier [ "who sought a new social or political goal" modifies "people" ] - correctly used
* Parallelism [ more "efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal" than "to go to the voters or work through Congress" ] - Not parallel
*Comparison - Not used
* Idioms [ more.....than.....] - used correctly



A. that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal

- Parallelism error ; "more.....than....." should be parallel.

- Incorrect

B. that for people who sought a new social or political goal, it was far more efficient to go to the courts

- It removes the parallelism error while using "to go to the courts"

- Corrects

C. that for people seeking a new social or political goal the courts were far more efficient to go to

1. Changed the meaning

- Incorrect


D. for people seeking a new social or political goal, going to the courts was far more efficient

1. Subject verb pair is missing of "people"
2. "going to the courts was for " incorrectly modifies the "people" which changed the meaning as well.

- Incorrect

E. for people who sought a new social or political goal, the courts were far more efficient

- Changed the meaning

- Incorrect

IMO(B)

During the 1970's it became clear that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal than to go to the voters or work through Congress.

Parallelism will be the key to solving this question. than to go to the voters. So it should be to go to the courts., Hence A, D, E are out.
Also C changes the structure. Plus the verb form of seek should be seek here and not seeking


A. that going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal

B. that for people who sought a new social or political goal, it was far more efficient to go to the courts

C. that for people seeking a new social or political goal the courts were far more efficient to go to

D. for people seeking a new social or political goal, going to the courts was far more efficient

E. for people who sought a new social or political goal, the courts were far more efficient

somebody please explain what does it refers to in option b ?

it refers to "people who sought a new social or political goal" in my opinion.

Check this article for details:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/pronouns-usa ... 28203.html

Hope this helps.

Kudos are appreciated if you liked the information

"It" Indeed refers to the people who sought a new social life and political goal, as per author's say, its efficient for those people to go to courts (where they can achieve their new social life goals by meeting new people) as compared to visiting voters (where they might not able to create a social image).

Posted from my mobile device

Here's the official explanation provided by the GMAC for this question:

This sentence draws a contrast between two alternative courses of action that certain people could have pursued. The references to the contrasted courses of action should be in relevantly parallel form to make the comparison clear and accurate. This could be done in several ways, including the use of gerunds (going to the courts… going to the voters or working …). Answer choice B, the best of the wordings offered here, expresses both alternatives in terms of infinitives (to go to the courts … to go to the voters or work …). The first of those alternatives is a single type of action: to go to the courts. The second is a complex either/or course of action expressed with two infinitive verb phrases, go to the voters and work through Congress. Both of the verbs are within the scope of the infinitive marker to that precedes go to the voters.

Option A: The contrast is made inelegant and imprecise by putting one action in terms of a gerund going and the other in terms of an infinitive verb to go.

Option B: Correct. The parallel structure to go … than to go ... or work clearly and efficiently expresses the contrast between the options the people faced.

Option C: The lack of parallelism makes this sentence incoherent. Saying that the courts were far more efficient to go to signals that the writer intends to contrast the courts with something else that was less efficient to go to. Instead, the latter part of the sentence nonsensically says that the courts were more efficient to go to than to go to the voters or work through Congress was [to go to].

Option D: The contrast is made inelegant and imprecise by putting one action in terms of a gerund going and the other in terms of an infinitive verb to go. The phrasing it became clear for people ... could be plausibly misinterpreted as meaning it became clear to people ... Inserting that before for would prevent that misinterpretation.

Option E: This illogically draws a contrast between a set of institutions—referred to with the noun courts—and an action—referred to with the infinitive verb to go. The phrasing it became clear for people ... could be plausibly misinterpreted as meaning it became clear to people ... Inserting that before for would prevent that misinterpretation.

The correct answer is B.

Please note that I'm not the author of this explanation. I'm just posting it here since I believe it can help the community.

Hello AndrewN,

I was wondering whether you could shed some light on the following issue, I can't find what "it" refers to in answer choice B, it has been mentioned that it refers to "people who....", but I'm not pretty sure about that.

Hello, UNSTOPPABLE12. I hate to spoil the party, but it is nothing more than a placeholder in (B)—that is, it has no antecedent. Placeholders simply serve a grammatical part of speech to create an independent clause. See the second definition in this OED entry for "placeholder," which mentions "it" specifically. (Another common example is the placeholder "it" in a weather-related sentence: It is raining.)

The latter half of the underlined portion could go two ways if it were on its own. (The infinitive to go within the comparison dictates a parallel infinitive.)

1) Going to the courts was far more efficient than... [verb-ing]

2) It was far more efficient to go to the courts than... [infinitive]

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me.

- Andrew

I am confused by this question, while I did get it right, it took me quite a while. I have been working on parallelism questions. My approach is to use the approach outlined by GMATNinja. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQgATaaw1ok&list=PLn5y_RKBkchQJFlkzVORO294uRALkO7Ud&index=2 (It seems to be the same strategy which the Manhattan books recommend.)

The first step in this approach would be to find the parallelism marker(s). In this case I am not sure there are any. Arguably we could define "that...than" as our parallelism markers, however I have never seen "that...than" defined as parallelism markers and I doubt that they are any. Despite this, this question is still a case of parallelism, therefore I assumed there must also be parallelism marker(s).

GMATNinja or anyone else, I would highly appreciate a clarification!

When it comes to parallelism, the most important thing is to notice the parallelism triggers when they appear and to evaluate the parallelism accordingly. But when you don't have parallelism triggers, you want to be conservative. In other words, if you don't see parallelism markers, you probably shouldn't be eliminating options because of supposed parallelism errors!

Because I don't see any parallelism triggers here, the first question I ask myself is, "does the comparison make sense in each option?" And we're looking for something that can logically be compared to "to go to the voters or work through Congress."

In (A), we have, "going to the courts" was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal than "to go to the voters or work through Congress".

• Now, can "going" technically be parallel to "to go"? Well, sure: "-ing" words and infinitives can both certainly act as a nouns. But again, we don't have parallelism triggers here, so I'm not strictly worried about parallelism.
• A better question is, "Why on Earth are we switching from 'going" to 'to go'?" Why not use "going" for both to make the comparison crystal clear? Also, notice that we have "for people who sought a new social or political goal" right in the middle of the comparison--that makes it even harder for the reader to understand what's being compared. In fact, the structure here causes the reader to expect a different comparison altogether. Something like, "going to the courts was far more efficient for people who sought a new social or political goal than {for people who _______}." Of course you can figure out the intended meaning, but it takes some work.
• Does that make (A) wrong? Does it violate any strict parallelism rules? Well, no -- but the comparison is a bit confusing. That's not a strong enough reason to eliminate (A) right away, but we should look for something better.

In (B), the comparison has a different structure: "it was far more efficient to go to the courts than to go to the voters or work through Congress." This structure eliminates the issues we saw in (A):

• By putting "for people who sought a new social or political goal" before the comparison, it's clear that we aren't comparing those people to some other people. Rather, we are comparing two different things that those same people could do.
• Those two different things are written in exactly the same form ("to _____") and appear on either side of the word "than," making it crystal clear that we are comparing "to go to the courts" to "to go to the voters or work through Congress". (Notice that we DO have a parallel list in the non-underlined part: "... to (1) go to the voters OR (2) work through Congress.")
• Again, (A) doesn't necessarily break any rules. But the comparison is more clear and obvious in (B), making it a better choice.

Yes, this looks a lot like a parallelism thing, but it's really about clarity of meaning -- so we can't go on auto-pilot and make quick eliminations based on mechanical parallelism errors, exactly.

I hope that helps!

What does 'it' in option B refers to?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi linuschoudhury, B says:

...it was far more efficient to go to the courts than to go to the voters or work through Congress.

it is referring to the infinitive phrase "to go to the courts than to go to the voters or work through Congress".

So, the way this sentence needs to be read is:

it (to go to the courts than to go to the voters or work through Congress) was far more efficient.

The above construct represents a case wherein the pronoun (it) is used before the antecedent (to go to the courts than to go to the voters or work through Congress).

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses cases wherein the pronoun (it) is used before the antecedent, 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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