Despite the fact that many professional writers consider travel writin

GMATNinja VeritasPrepKarishma

Can you please advise on using negation for (C) and (D) ?

Hi GMATNinja, VeritasPrepKarishma,

If we negate option C, doesn't it give, any writing that does employ classical techniques is a lesser form of journalism. And this breaks our conclusion correct? Or am I negating the statement incorrectly?

Lets analyse what you are saying. you are pointing that

(C) Any writing that employs classical techniques is a lesser form of journalism.

given the subject should we include fiction too in it. point is this choice is too wide to talk about. Hope it helped.

Option (C) has a universal modifier.

(C) Any writing that does not employ classical techniques is a lesser form of journalism.
This means "All writings that do not employ classical techniques are lesser forms of journalism."

To negate,
All -> Not all
This becomes -> Not all writings that do not employ classical techniques are lesser forms of journalism.

The form is: Not all A that do B are C.
i.e. There are some A that do B but are not C.

Basically, that there are some writings that do not employ classical techniques but are legitimate forms of journalism.

This talks about writings that do not employ classical techniques. Our argument is concerned about those that do involve classical techniques. We cannot say anything about those that do not employ classical techniques.

The question is based on identifying assumption in gap of reasoning from premise to conclusion.
The Cause effect we have is only explained by D.

Here is the explanation of why C is not the assumption.

According to C, If X, then Y where X: A writing does not employ classical techniques, and
Y: A writing is a lesser form of journalism.

If X, then Y.
If not Y, then not X.

These two conditional statements are equivalent.

Then according to C, if writing is a greater form of journalism, then it employs classical techniques.

However, in the conclusion of the argument, it says and this saying is an equivalent of the conditional statement: "If writing employs classical techniques, then it is a greater form of journalism." Did you notice that this conditional statement is a mistaken reversal of the assumption in C?

Kudos, if this post helps.

Experts GMATNinja, VeritasKarishma confirm my reasoning, please.

This is similar to official Question-
https://gmatclub.com/forum/although-par ... ml#p102335

Yes, this is correct.

Hi VeritasKarishma

could you please help in negating option D and leading to the answer, since it does not deal with any quantity elements logically, I'm struggling to negate and find the weakening argument.

Take a look at the argument structure:

Counter-premise: Despite the fact that many professional writers consider travel writing a lesser form of journalism.
Premise: since it employs classical journalism techniques such as detailed research into the history of the locale and extensive interviews with local residents.
Conclusion: it is in fact a legitimate journalistic enterprise.

The first step is to properly identify the conclusion—“it is in fact a legitimate journalistic enterprise”—which is presented in the middle of the argument. Given our discussion about linking new elements that appear in the conclusion, you should have recognized that a new element was present (“legitimate journalistic enterprise”) and responded accordingly by linking that information
with the main premise of the argument, namely that travel writing employs classic techniques. Given that Supporters connect new elements, one would suspect that the correct answer would include these two elements and that answer choice (D) was likely to be correct.


The author does not discuss “noteworthy subjects,” and hence this is not an assumption of the argument.


The first part of this answer is extremely attractive, but the second half of the answer addresses “intriguing material,” another subject that was not discussed in the argument. Like
(A), this is not an assumption of the argument.


This is the most popular wrong answer choice. The answer connects two pieces of the argument, but those pieces are from the premise and the counter-premise. The author only discusses the fact that travel writing uses classic techniques, but the author does makes not assumption about writing that does not use those techniques.


This is the correct answer. The answer acts as a Supporter and connects the
elements in the conclusion to the elements in the final sentence.


This answer attempts to falsely commingle two of the methods used by the classical journalism: research and interviews. There is no indication that the interviews with the residents reveals the history of the locale.

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