Reporting that one of its many problems had been the recent extended

This one is an absolute classic. One key to the question is that “the seven-store retailer” is singular, so “its” definitely works better than “they.” Most people catch that part, though.

The more common mistake is with the verb tenses. Hopefully, you immediately notice the verb tense in the phrase “one of its many problems had been the recent... sales slump." "Had been" is past perfect tense, and for that to be acceptable, there has to another past action somewhere in the sentence that occurs AFTER the recent sales slump. The tricky part is noticing that "said" is actually in simple past tense, and that actually makes sense: the recent sales slump had been a problem before the retailer said that it would begin liquidation.

So with that in mind…

This looks pretty good. The pronoun is correct, and the past perfect makes sense, as described above. So let’s keep (A).


Now the verb tense doesn’t work: “has been” (present perfect, if you like jargon) indicates an action that started in the past and continues into the present. So the sequencing doesn’t really make sense in its current form: literally, it’s saying that the retailer said -- in the past – that it would start a liquidation sale (implying that the retailer is closing down), but somehow it reported an ongoing sales slump that continues into the present? Seems odd to me. We’re trying to say that one of the retailer’s many problems included a sales slump, and THEN the retailer announced the liquidation. So the present perfect tense isn’t ideal in (B).

And if you don’t believe that, we also have a problem with the adverb “recently”:

• ”recent extended sales slump” → Both “recent” and “extended” are adjectives that describe the “sales slump.” And that makes sense: the sales slump is extended (a synonym for “long” in this case), and it also is recent. Fine.
• ”recently extended sales slump” → Now “recently” is an adverb that modifies “extended.” That warps the meaning: now the sales slump was recently extended, meaning that the sales slump was just – in the last few days or weeks – somehow lengthened. And there’s no reason why we would say that here: the sentence is trying to say that the sales slump itself was recent, not that it was lengthened recently.

So we have a couple of not-terribly-easy reasons to eliminate (B).


(C) basically has some of the same problems as (B). For starters, the present tense is definitely wrong here: the retailer – in the past tense – said that it would start a liquidation sale, so it doesn’t make sense to say that one of its many problems is the sales slump. How could the sales slump happen AFTER the announcement to liquidate?

And “recently” is still a problem, too. See the explanation for (B) for more on this issue.

So (C) is out.


The present tense still doesn’t make sense – see the explanation for (C) for more on that issue. And “their” is plural, and can’t logically refer to the (singular) “seven-store retailer.”

So we can eliminate (D).


I’m good with the verb tense (see the explanation at the very top of this post for more), but “their” once again can’t refer to the (singular) “seven-store retailer.”

We can eliminate (E), and we’re left with (A).