GMAT Ninja SC Expert - Ask Me Anything about GMAT SC and Grammar

GMATNinja Hi Charles. Requesting you to please elaborate the use of placeholder pronouns. If there is already a resource developed by you, please redirect me there. I could not find any!

Are you talking about non-referential pronouns? For example, in the phrase "it is snowing", the "it" doesn't actually refer to anything. Is that the type of thing you're interested in?

If so, this post, this one, or this one might help. Let us know if that doesn't clear things up!

Thanks a lot!
This is exactly what I was looking for.
So, the crux - what I could infer - is, one should not reject an option only due to the ambiguity of a pronoun, unless there is a better clearer option.

Hi GMATNinja

I confuse about comparison structure.

Which one is correct?
1. The population size of butterflies in Summer is bigger than in Winter.
2. The population size of butterflies in Summer is bigger than that in Winter.

If an "X or Y" construction is the subject of a clause, the second element,"Y," will determine whether the verb is singular or plural.

1) Tim or his kids are going to set the house on fire if they continue to use the family blowtorch with such blatant disregard.

2) The kids or Tim is going to be in big trouble if that fire continues to rage.

In your example, "Ravi or his friends," the second element is "his friends," so you'd use a plural verb.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja

When it comes to parallelism with prepositions, when MUST I use the preposition and when CAN I assume it is implicitly there? For example, which of the following sentences are correct?

“He enjoyed talking to his friends at the gym and at the store.”

“He enjoyed talking to his friends at the gym and the store.”

Also, how can I determine whether the content that is being paralleled is the prepositional phrase or the nouns themselves? Is there a precedence (e.g., if there is a prepositional phrase parallelism opportunity, you must use the preposition parallel structure even if you can parallel just the nouns)? For example, is there a precedence of one of the sentence structures below over the other?

“Significant advancements were made in AI and blockchain.”

“Significant advancements were made in AI and in blockchain.”

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(A) "Chicago-style" deep-dish pizza must have its crust, which resembles a pie crust more than a traditional pizza-style flatbread, baked alone before toppings are added, and so takes longer to prepare it than most other types of pizza.

its crust resembles a pie crust more than a traditional pizza-style flatbread

(C) "Chicago-style" deep-dish pizza takes longer to prepare than most other types of pizza because of its crust, resembling a pie crust more than a traditional pizza-style flatbread, must be baked alone before adding toppings.

its crust, resembling a pie crust more than a traditional pizza-style flatbread

Here in A and C, the comparison is correct. Is it? GMATNinja Thanks!

Like a lot of SC issues, this one depends on context. Consider 3 different scenarios.

Scenario 1: "Tim has lived in France and Spain." vs "Tim has lived in France and in Spain."

The two sentences are on equal footing. They mean exactly the same thing and so the GMAT can't ask to choose between them.

Scenario 2: "Tim has lived both in France and Spain" vs "Tim has lived both in France and in Spain."

Now, because we get that special parallelism trigger, "both," the two elements following the trigger must be identical. Therefore, "Tim has lived both in France and in Spain is correct," while the first sentence is incorrect.

Scenario 3: "A combination of vanilla and chocolate makes for a delicious sundae." vs "A combination of vanilla and of chocolate makes for a delicious sundae."

This one comes down to meaning. The construction in the second sentence, "a combination of vanilla and of chocolate" doesn't make sense, because it sounds as though there are two combinations: one combination of vanilla and a second combination of chocolate. But a combination, by definition, contains at least two elements. A combination of vanilla alone is incoherent, since the vanilla hasn't been combined with anything, so you don't have a sundae at all! In this case, we'd want one combination, consisting of vanilla and chocolate.

The takeaway: first, determine whether you have a special parallel trigger, such as "both." If you do, the components must both have the preposition if the first element does. Otherwise, ask yourself if the presence or absence of the preposition changes the meaning. If it doesn't, the two are on equal footing, and it's not a decision point. If the preposition does change the meaning, ask yourself which construction is more logical.

I hope that helps!

That's a great question, but unfortunately I don't have a great answer for you.

Actually, you might totally hate my answer.

We here at GMAT Ninja rely exclusively on official materials for SC, just because it's nearly impossible for non-official verbal questions to come anywhere close to the real thing. Think of it this way: official GMAT verbal questions often hinge on a very tiny nuance of meaning, and it's asking waaaaay too much for test-prep companies to nail those nuances every time. GMAC spends literally thousands of dollars developing each individual test question, and it's unrealistic to expect test-prep companies to spend more than a very tiny fraction of that amount.

As a result, I don't think that non-official SC questions are worth doing at all -- and I've written dozens of them myself. You shouldn't use those, either.

So I know that this is a terrible answer, but whenever we meet a student who has seen pretty much EVERY official SC question, then we'll (A) ask the student to redo some of those questions and/or (B) try to squeeze every last drop of value out of the official questions (i.e. by asking the student to identify every single issue with every wrong answer choice). We'll also direct them toward older editions of the OGs (for example, only about 40% of the questions in OG 12 also appear in OG 2021), and once you're CERTAIN that you'll never retake the first two official mba.com practice tests, you can work through all of the SC questions in those question banks.

I know that it's unsatisfying, but I hope that helps a bit!

If you're asking about whether the bolded modifiers are used correctly, in (A), I'd say yes. "Which" must describe a noun and here it seems to describe the "crust." Perfectly logical. There is, however, a pretty big meaning problem here, as "pizza" is the subject of "prepare it," making it sound as though the pizza is preparing itself.

In (C), "resembling" is more problematic. Typically, when we have CLAUSE + COMMA + -ING, the -ing modifier will describe the previous clause, giving us additional info about the action in that clause. But that makes no sense here, as "resembling a pie crust" is hardly a consequence of the fact that this pizza "takes longer to prepare." So this modifier seems to be no good.

I hope that helps!

Hi GMATNinja

Could you please have a look at the below question from the official guide:


Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.


(A) Although she was considered among her contemporaries to be the better poet than her husband, later Elizabeth Barrett Browning was overshadowed by his success.

(B) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered among her contemporaries as a better poet than her husband, she was later overshadowed by his success.

(C) Later overshadowed by the success of her husband, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry had been considered among her contemporaries to be better than that of her husband.

(D) Although Elizabeth Barrett Browning's success was later overshadowed by that of her husband, among her contemporaries she was considered the better poet.

(E) Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry was considered among her contemporaries as better than her husband, but her success was later overshadowed by his.

The OA is (D)
The main point of contention is the way the pronouns have been used, referring back to the possessives. On my first attempt I had eliminated (D) {thinking literally about the sentence as you had suggested in your YouTube sessions} and selected (B).

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Contentious OA indeed!

We addressed that point in this post. Check it out (and check out our other explanations in that 4-page thread). If you still have questions after reading through everything, please feel free to post them in the thread for that question.

Thanks! That helps a lot. GMATNinja

One more question regarding the comparison in option A:

(A) "Chicago-style" deep-dish pizza must have its crust, which resembles a pie crust more than a traditional pizza-style flatbread, baked alone before toppings are added, and so takes longer to prepare it than most other types of pizza.

Here we are comparing to actions:

"Chicago-style" deep-dish pizza's crust resembles a pie crust more than "Chicago-style" deep-dish pizza's crust resembles a traditional pizza-style flatbread

Isn't it incorrect comparison? It should be like this:

"Chicago-style" deep-dish pizza's crust resembles a pie crust more than a traditional pizza-style flatbread's crust does

Is it correct?

Thanks GMATNinja

Another follow up question on parallelism: Why does the sentence sometimes end in an object form of the pronoun and sometimes the subject form? For example:

“She now had a number of friends much smarter than she.” vs.

“She now has a number of friends much smarter than her.”

or

“Compared to the Jones, Peter was better suited to the lifestyle than they were.” vs.

“Compared to the Jones, Peter was better suited to the lifestyle than them.”

For each set of sentences, is it that one sentence is better than the other or is one of the two actually wrong?

First of all, I would NOT let what you see in an RC or CR question influence your thoughts on SC. There are probably countless examples of sentences in RC/CR passages that wouldn't fly as correct choices on an SC question.

More importantly, when it comes to SC, your job is to select the BEST answer choice out of the five available options. Looking at a single sentence in a bubble (no matter where it comes from) and trying to determine whether it's "correct" or "incorrect" based on grammar "rules" is an entirely different job -- one that you'll never have to do on the GMAT.

So, "Can we just put NOT in front of present or past participial phase to change meaning to opposite?" I'm not sure... maybe? Do the other four choices have egregious issues? Then perhaps it's okay?

The second we try to come up with our "rule" governing this sort of thing, the GMAT will laugh at us and come up with a way to break it. As we say all the time, there is just no way to distill GMAT SC down to a set of easy-to-memorize grammar rules. You have to think really hard about the differences among the given choices and determine which choice is the best. A bulletproof list of rules would be more fun, but that's just not how the exam works.


Any guess what I'm going to say?

There are very few concrete, black and white "rules" that ALWAYS work on the GMAT. Just because a construction works in one correct answer choice doesn't mean that construction is always correct. And just because a construction doesn't work in an incorrect answer choice doesn't mean that it's always wrong.

"In choosing a wedding venue, it's important to consider the local climate." - Would this be okay on the GMAT? Well, it's certainly not automatically wrong to have a preposition followed by a participle on the GMAT (here's an example). More importantly, we'd have to see what's going on in the other four choices.

The takeaway: unless you're sure that something like this is WRONG -- and in this case, I'm skeptical that we have a clear error here -- play it safe and look for other decision points.

Sorry for the not-so-satisfying responses!

That's a great question, and unfortunately there is no great answer. As discussed in our SC guide for beginners, no two questions will test exactly the same content and meaning, and thinking about meaning isn't something that can be distilled down to easy-to-follow steps.

You simply have to practice (1) finding the strict, literal differences in meaning between two or more answer choices and (2) thinking really hard about those meaning differences. Context is key -- sure, you might have two options that are technically okay from a grammar perspective, but does one of them make a whole lot more sense based on the context? Are there any choices that make the meaning illogical or unclear?

These meaning differences are often very subtle and tricky. We've done our best to address some of them in our full explanations, but, again, no two questions are alike.

So if you come across this sort of thing an official question, feel free to tag us, and we'll do our best to help!

Hi GMATNinja

I am unable to observe any definite error/split in this question. Could you please look into this & share an awesome reasoning/explanation as you always do.

Link: https://gmatclub.com/forum/since-fanati ... 46304.html

Since fanatics usually regard themselves as self-less patriots eager to die for their beliefs, fanaticism can rarely be controlled, however ruthless the countermeasures.

(A) however ruthless the countermeasures
(B) whatever the ruthless there is in the countermeasures
(C) no matter threat the countermeasures are ruthless
(D) in spite of the ruthlessness of the countermeasures
(E) even though there are ruthless countermeasures