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805+ (Hard)|   Parallelism|      
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 12 Jun 2020, 05:16
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MartyTargetTestPrep
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For answer choice B, I am failing to see how it is not parallel. "purchasers are discouraged by THE FACT, as well as THE COMPETITION. Both are nouns and they both follow the same structure. Why is this not parallel?
Good catch.

While a second "by" after "as well as" would perhaps make (B) easier to read, (B) is basically parallel as written.

Meanwhile, in (C), the placement of "increasingly" is suboptimal. It makes more sense to place "increasingly" directly before "discouraged," as "increasingly" is in (B).

The point to be made is not that the purchasers "increasingly are" something. The point to be made is that the purchasers are "increasingly discouraged."

At the same time, in (B), "by the fact that x and that y" does not make complete sense. We have two facts, but the singular "fact" is used. Ideally, either "fact" would be repeated before the second "that" or the plural "facts" would be used.
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Thanks MartyTargetTestPrep for the explanation. Can you give an example, which highlights the intended meaning, for the above highlighted sentence structure, so that we can contextualise the variations ?

Regards,
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 20 Jul 2020, 05:12
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Bulleride
I found this question pretty good and thus wanted to share with you guys. It's a nested parallelism question. Here's the OE:

(A) The first two parallel elements are prepositional phrases: discouraged by X and by Y. To maintain the parallel structure, the third element (competition) should also be a prepositional phrase: discouraged by X and by Y, as well as by Z.

In addition, the nested parallelism is ambiguous. Is the competition from one source—new services that stream two things (content and traditional movies)? Or is the competition from two sources—traditional movies and new services that stream content over the internet?

(B) Choice (B) changes the first two elements in the list; they now both begin with the word that (that viewership is shrinking and that many viewers fast-forward through commercials). To maintain the parallel structure, the third element (competition) should also begin with that.

(C) CORRECT. The split between increasingly are and are increasingly is a red herring: The adverb can be placed before or after the verb. This sentence adds the word by before the competition, fixing the broken parallelism.

(D) This sentence fixes the initial broken parallelism: now, discouraged by introduces the list and the preposition is (correctly) not repeated in each of the later elements in the list. However, the sentence now has just one list with four elements (discouraged by W, X, Y, and Z). As written, this sentence indicates that the ad-purchasers are discouraged by … traditional movies, as though the ad-purchasers dislike traditional movies themselves. In fact, they are discouraged by the competition from traditional movies.

(E) The first two elements in the list are now full sentences (viewership is shrinking, viewers are fast-forwarding through commercials); however, the last element (the competition from traditional movies as well as new services that stream content over the internet) is not a sentence; it lacks a verb, breaking the parallelism.

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Can someone elaborate how 'increasingly are' is correct?
Is it not the case that increasingly should come right before discouraged? as it is modifying discouraged?

I was caught up between A and C and ended up selecting A.
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 09 Dec 2020, 14:11
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MartyTargetTestPrep
kchen1994
For answer choice B, I am failing to see how it is not parallel. "purchasers are discouraged by THE FACT, as well as THE COMPETITION. Both are nouns and they both follow the same structure. Why is this not parallel?
Good catch.

While a second "by" after "as well as" would perhaps make (B) easier to read, (B) is basically parallel as written.

Meanwhile, in (C), the placement of "increasingly" is suboptimal. It makes more sense to place "increasingly" directly before "discouraged," as "increasingly" is in (B).

The point to be made is not that the purchasers "increasingly are" something. The point to be made is that the purchasers are "increasingly discouraged."

At the same time, in (B), "by the fact that x and that y" does not make complete sense. We have two facts, but the singular "fact" is used. Ideally, either "fact" would be repeated before the second "that" or the plural "facts" would be used.
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Hello MartyTargetTestPrep,

I was wondering whether you could help me regarding the following question.
First of all I understand how By (the fact) - By the competition are parallel my only issue is with the first pararallelism "by the fact that x and that y" .

I'm a little bit confused and I would appreciate your opinion on the following , because by the fact (that x and that y) could carry over to both that x and that y so even if it is not written don't we consider that by the fact goes to both elements(carry over test for parallelism)? By the fact that x and by the fact that y, thus it does make sense, and we don't need a plural.

If we changed the fact to the facts then I suppose we would have by the facts that x and that y and we wouldn't consider to check whether by the facts carries over to the following elements because they are already parallel?
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 28 Feb 2022, 12:44
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I was confused b/w A and C, can someone please clarify how "increasingly are " is correct
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 28 Feb 2022, 13:47
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parthgilra

This is an example of one of those distinctions that doesn't really matter. Both versions mean pretty much the same thing. "Increasingly are discouraged" = They are discouraged more, or more often. "Are increasingly discouraged" = They are getting more discouraged. People often make the mistake of looking for a difference, especially at the front of the answers, and picking the one they prefer. You can miss quite a few questions that way! Rather, look for outright errors first, and only go with "this seems a little better" if you have nothing else left to go on.
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 04 Mar 2022, 06:48
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parthgilra
I was confused b/w A and C, can someone please clarify how "increasingly are " is correct
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Hello parthgilra,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your question, both "adverb ("increasingly" in this sentence) + verb ("are" in this sentence)" and "verb + adverb" are acceptable constructions.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 16 Aug 2022, 10:29
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Between opt B and opt C, the parallelism varies in the following way..

opt B > (x || y) || z
.. by the fact (that viewership is shrinking || that many viewers... ) || the competition from ...

opt C > x || y || z
... by shrinking viewership || by the fact.., || by the competition from...

In fact, I can observe that opt C does not use an article in the first item but the uses it in the next two items (highlighted in red).

Is one type preferred over another? Is the missing article not an issue in this parallelism?

Would be glad to get some help here experts GMATGuruNY GMATNinja mikemcgarry DmitryFarber
Thank you :)
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 16 Aug 2022, 11:05
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srikanth27
In fact, I can observe that opt C does not use an article in the first item but the uses it in the next two items (highlighted in red).

Is one type preferred over another? Is the missing article not an issue in this parallelism?
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Generally, the GMAT does not test the usage of articles -- a, an, the -- so I would not use this issue to evaluate parallelism.
It is quite common for NO ARTICLE + NOUN to be parallel with ARTICLE + NOUN.
An OA in GMAT Prep:
Recent examples include brain growth or an increase in neurons.
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 18 Dec 2022, 13:09
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avigutman here how is C right? Clearly as well as is not a parallelism marker and does not need to be // and I have also faltered on many other questions based on this logic. So im sure now as well as is not // marker so B technically seems completely parallel in itself. : 'discouraged by the fact that.... , as well as the competion' makes perfect sense. What is the reason to reject B then?
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 18 Dec 2022, 17:19
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Elite097
B technically seems completely parallel in itself
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Elite097 Here's the issue I find with (B):
Quote:
Purchasers are discouraged by the fact:
that viewership is shrinking
and
that many viewers fast-forward through commercials
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Should be facts, not fact.

Now let's look at (C):
Quote:
Purchasers are discouraged:
by shrinking viewership
and
by the fact that many viewers fast-forward through commercials
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Problem solved.
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 19 Dec 2022, 12:35
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So are you agreeing with me that the three elements in B are correctly written as it is and the part after as well as need not be parallel? Can i then say that the only issue with B is fact/facts isssue?

Also can you help me identify the root phrase for the as well as part in choice B?

In C, why does the explanation say we care about making as well as portion also //? And how is increasingly are=are increasingly? avigutman


avigutman
Elite097
B technically seems completely parallel in itself
Elite097 Here's the issue I find with (B):
Quote:
Purchasers are discouraged by the fact:
that viewership is shrinking
and
that many viewers fast-forward through commercials
Should be facts, not fact.

Now let's look at (C):
Quote:
Purchasers are discouraged:
by shrinking viewership
and
by the fact that many viewers fast-forward through commercials
Problem solved.
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 19 Dec 2022, 18:04
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Elite097
So are you agreeing with me that the three elements in B are correctly written as it is and the part after as well as need not be parallel? Can i then say that the only issue with B is fact/facts isssue?

Also can you help me identify the root phrase for the as well as part in choice B?
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"as well as" does require parallelism, as implied by your second question above (a root phrase is something that exists only in the context of parallelism).
You can read more about "as well as" here.
The root phrase in (B) for the "as well as" parallelism is Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by
The full parallelism in (B) looks something like this:
Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by
(1) the fact
(i) that viewership is shrinking
and
(ii) that many viewers fast-forward through commercials,
as well as
(2) the competition from
(i) traditional movies
and
(ii) new services
that stream content over the internet.

To make it simpler, we have:

Quote:
Purchasers are discouraged by the fact (that x and that y), as well as z.
Show more

I agree with you that the only grammatical issue with B is fact/facts, Elite097. However, from a meaning standpoint, it's very strange to separate x and y from z in that manner. The way (C) "fixes" the parallelism does appear to be a more logical construction, given that we're just looking at three elements that purchasers are discouraged by. (C) puts them on a level playing field, if you will.
Elite097
In C, why does the explanation say we care about making as well as portion also //? And how is increasingly are=are increasingly?
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Asked, and answered here.
This is why I recommend sticking to official GMAT problems. There's more than enough of those to study from.
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Purchasers of television advertising are increasingly discouraged by 02 Jan 2024, 07:13
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