SALAKSHYA wrote:
HI
GMATNinja,
egmat,
mikemcgarryI correctly Marked option E, But i could not eleminate option B for pure grammetical mistakes other than ambiguity. Can you please state problems with option B.
Here's (B) again:
Quote:
In July 1965 Mariner IV passed by Mars and took the first-ever close-up photographs of another planet, which showed a dry, apparently dead Martian surface, and it was pockmarked by craters like the Moon has.
The first thing I notice is the "and it." Typically, when a pronoun serves as the subject of a clause, it will refer to the subject of the previous clause. At first, it sounds like the Mariner IV passed by Mars... and the
Mariner IV was pockmarked.
However, this isn't an absolute rule, and if you keep looking, you can see that "it" likely refers to the "dead Martian surface." So the pronoun isn't a definitive error, but it's not ideal either.
Next, you might notice that it's hard to determine what "which" refers to. We break that usage down
here. Again, not a concrete error, but the kind of thing that might be useful as a tie-breaker if there's another option that's clearer.
Last, the phrase "was pockmarked by craters like the Moon" makes it sound as though we're comparing "craters" to the "Moon." That doesn't make any sense. Can you eventually figure out what the author intended? Sure. But it requires some work.
So now we've got three confusing issues in (B). Notice that (E) resolves all of them -- there's no problematic "it" or "which," and the comparison issue is resolved by incorporating the phrase, "like
those of," where "those" clearly refers to "craters." While there might not be a definitive grammatical error in (B), in a side by side comparison, (E) is clearer and better, and therefore correct.
I hope that helps!
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