SC Doubts

Question

Hi  GMATNinja ,

Kindly help to understand the below sentence from WSJ

"Companies are spending more money on carbon offsets to meet sustainability targets and bolster their appeal to socially conscious investors and customers."

if we change it to - "to meet sustainability targets and to bolster", will the meaning change

Please also help understand the usage of few :

1. There is a few shoes on the rack.
2. There are a few shoes on the rack.

Which one of these is correct?

SalahT · Answer

There is not the subject. Subject is "shoes"  A plural noun will take a plural verb. Thus, Answer choice 2 is correct.
Try rewriting like this 
1. A few shoes is on the rack.
2. A few shoes are on the rack.
Now it is obvious that 2 is correct

Generally in this kind of sentences subject comes after the verb and it is possible to rewrite the sentence the way I did to get a clear view.
Ps: I am not GMATNinja

ryanstarr · Answer

Kindly help to understand the below sentence from WSJ

"Companies are spending more money on carbon offsets to meet sustainability targets and bolster their appeal to socially conscious investors and customers."

if we change it to - "to meet sustainability targets and to bolster", will the meaning change

Hello,  GMATaxe001 !

There's no difference in meaning between the version of the sentence as it's written and your proposed version, which includes a second 'to' in the parallel structure. There are times when the GMAT will include the second 'to' in a parallel structure just to make it   exceptionally   clear that the parallelism is between two infinitives, but usually it only includes this second 'to' when the first part of the parallel structure is very long (and especially if the first part of the parallel structure contains other verbs that might otherwise get mistaken as part of the parallelism). So for instance if the sentence were written as follows:

"Companies are spending more money on carbon offsets to meet sustainability targets that had been established in 2018 and bolster their appeal..."

...the link between 'bolster' and 'meet' would be a bit less obvious, and a 'to' before 'bolster' would help with clarity.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja · Answer

No, I don't think that adding the "to" before "bolster" changes the meaning. In either case, the parallel structure and intended meaning are clear -- companies are spending more money on carbon offsets for two reasons:

1) to meet sustainability targets
2) (to) bolster their appeal to socially conscious investors and customers 
 
"There" functions as a placeholder for the subject, which, in this case is "a few shoes." Because a "few shoes" is plural, we'd write, "there  are  a few shoes."

This is not a terribly important issue on the GMAT, but I hope that clears things up! (Also:  quality publications like the WSJ aren't worried about whether their sentences are correct in the eyes of GMAC .)

SC Doubts

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