mymba99 wrote:
In no other historical sighting did Halley's comet cause such a worldwide sensation as
did its return in 1910-1911.
(A) did its return in 1910-1911
(B) had its 1910-1911 return
(C) in its return of 1910-1911
(D) its return of 1910-1911 did
(E) its return in 1910-1911
Lets bring Obama into the picture instead of Hally, the comet for a moment :-D
Rephrase with C - In no other election did Obama cause such a sensation as (he did) in his presidential race of 2008. (We can omit 'he did' and still convey the same meaning)
Sensation caused by Obama in all the previous elections is compared with sensation caused by Obama in presidential race.)
In no other historical sighting did Halley's comet cause such a worldwide sensation as (it did) in its return of 1910-1911
Rephrase with A - In no other election did Obama cause such a sensation as did his presidential race of 2008. ( Incorrect comparison. Sensation caused by Obama in all the previous elections is compared incorrectly with sensation caused by presidential election. But we should compare sensations caused by Obama in both the cases.)
In no other historical sighting did Halley's comet cause such a worldwide sensation as (did its return in 1910-1911)
B - no need to discuss. Had is not necessary. Changes the meaning.
Rephrase with D - In no other election did Obama cause such a sensation as his presidential race of 2008 did. (again sensation by Obama is compared with sensation caused by presidential election. Same problem as A.
In no other historical sighting did Halley's comet cause such a worldwide sensation as (its return of 1910-1911 did )
Rephrase with E - In no other election did Obama cause such a sensation as his presidential race of 2008. ( Here sentence ends abruptly. Here sensation caused by Obama is compared with presidential race itself.
In no other historical sighting did Halley's comet cause such a worldwide sensation as its return in 1910-1911
Ofcourse we all can come up with explanations once we know OA. :wink:
Nice One. +1 to the poster.
Great little question likely to upset people but not hard at all.
In case of comparisons, we can follow ‘as’ with prepositional phrases when the comparison is quite clear.
For example:
As for adults, for many children too, short attention span is a problem. The comparison is between ‘adults’ and ‘many children.’
Then what are we comparing in our original question? 'that one particular sighting' with 'the many sightings.'
The non-underlined part has the many sightings in a prepositional phrase.
Consider the non-underlined part:
In no other historical sighting did the comet cause such a sensation as …
If we were to complete this sentence as clearly and properly as possible, we would write:
In no other historical sighting did the comet cause such a sensation as it did in its return of 1910-1911.We will follow ‘as’ with a clause. But when the comparison is clear, we can follow ‘as’ with just the prepositional phrase:
In no other historical sighting did the comet cause such a sensation as in its return of 1910-1911.
This we know is correct and this is given in option (C). Hence, option (C) is certainly correct. Now let’s focus on why other options are not as good.
(A) did its return in 1910-1911 This would make sense if the sentence were: No other sighting of Halley’s comet caused such a sensation as did its return in 1910-1911
‘did’ would stand for ‘caused’ here. ‘No other sighting’ is compared with ‘its return in 1910-1911’
But this is not what we have and hence this option is not correct.
(B) had its 1910-1911 return We know that we replace verbs with do/did, not had. Hence, this is not correct.
(D) its return of 1910-1911 did Same problem as in option (A). The only difference is that here, ‘did’ is placed later rather than before. It doesn’t materially change the sentence though we usually prefer to put ‘did’ before.
(E) its return in 1910-1911The preposition ‘in’ is missing. Since it is there in the non-underlined part, we need it for parallelism.
Answer (C)