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22 Sep 2021, 09:19
Kudos
Bookmarks
Hi Experts
While going through a OG CR question - I hoping to get some understanding on why the "are" is needed at the end of below sentence? The comparison is clearly between older vs younger drivers but here what does "are" help replace?
In Wareland last year, 16 percent of licensed drivers under 21 and 11 percent of drivers ages 21-24 were in serious accidents. By contrast, only 3 percent of licensed drivers 65 and older were involved in serious accidents. These figures clearly show that the greater experience and developed habits of caution possessed by drivers in the 65-and-older group make them far safer behind the wheel than the younger drivers are.
I cannot see any reason why we need "are" and it makes more sense to remove the "are".
Regards
RRJ12
While going through a OG CR question - I hoping to get some understanding on why the "are" is needed at the end of below sentence? The comparison is clearly between older vs younger drivers but here what does "are" help replace?
In Wareland last year, 16 percent of licensed drivers under 21 and 11 percent of drivers ages 21-24 were in serious accidents. By contrast, only 3 percent of licensed drivers 65 and older were involved in serious accidents. These figures clearly show that the greater experience and developed habits of caution possessed by drivers in the 65-and-older group make them far safer behind the wheel than the younger drivers are.
I cannot see any reason why we need "are" and it makes more sense to remove the "are".
Regards
RRJ12
22 Sep 2021, 09:40
Kudos
Bookmarks
RRJ12
Good question. There have been a few discussions about the need of the verb in the comparisons. The old school approach has required it but the rule has been relaxed in the past 5 or so years and it is not considered a hard mistake if the verb is skipped at the end of the comparisons. I need to find that topic/discussion
First of all, the "are" at the end is not a mistake. You could potentially argue that it could be removed but look at this comparison in a simpler form:
E.g. He likes ice cream more than his brother. In this case, does he like ice cream more than his brother likes ice cream or does he like ice cream more than he likes his brother? You need a verb to clarify - He likes ice cream more than his brother does.
habits of caution make them far safer than the younger drivers - there is ambiguity here too. But not as obvious. Are these habits of caution making the old group far safer than the habits of safety make the younger drivers? or these habits of caution make the older drivers safer than younger drivers are safe? This is not as confusing and ambiguous example as the first one and sometimes GMAT will let it go and focus on a bigger mistake but in this case, the "are" is technically needed and required to maintain the parallel construction of a comparison. P.S. it make take a few reads to figure this out. It did for me
23 Sep 2021, 11:06
Kudos
Bookmarks
Quote:
bb above gave a solid explanation. But this gives me the chance to talk about what is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult and frustrating concepts of the whole tests: ellipses. You might think of ellipses as the '...' , but here the 'ellipses' in a sentence are words that are allowed to be left out but are *implied by parallel structure.*
They are RAMPANT in comparisons. One of the trickiest aspects of SC comparisons is ellipses. To spot them you must ask yourself 'what words are left out? And is there *only one choice*?'
The sentence in question has an ellipses. The ellipses are included below in [brackets]:
These figures clearly show that the greater experience and developed habits of caution possessed by drivers in the 65-and-older group make them far safer behind the wheel than the younger drivers are [safe].
The 'safe' is implied, because we're saying 'this older group is safe, more safe than this younger group is safe.'
What if we drop the 'are?' No problem right? We could just throw the 'are' into the ellipses.
These figures clearly show that the greater experience and developed habits of caution possessed by drivers in the 65-and-older group make them far safer behind the wheel than the younger drivers [are safe].
Well... But wait. Who says, aside from human understanding, that in that sentence the ellipses aren't something like this:
These figures clearly show that the greater experience and developed habits of caution possessed by drivers in the 65-and-older group make them far safer behind the wheel than [the habits make them] the younger drivers.
(As if the habits of caution could make them 'safe' or make them 'into the younger drivers,' but here they happened to make the older drivers 'safe.')
You might be like, "But come on, that's crap." I hear you... Except the sentence, "The food coloring makes the eggs more blue than green." Has the same structure, and that clearly means 'the food coloring makes the eggs more blue than [it makes them] green.'
(...if I were being hella pedantic, I could argue that the original sentence could read "The food coloring makes the eggs more blue than green [makes the eggs blue]," which is obviously wrong, so maybe the sentence should say "The food coloring makes the eggs more blue than it does green."
...But that doesn't seem right...
I don't know, man, truth is this why I *hate* ellipses!)
Regardless, the thing to always remember about GMAT SC is that it's not whether the meaning is clear to *you*, it's whether the meaning is clear 'objectively' (based on the rules of grammar, and allowing that language is still imperfect...) The meaning needs to be *in the structure*.
Now... I think they probably could have left the 'are' off in this case. But by including the 'are' they remove any ('objective') ambiguity from the sentence.
[My favorite sentence for ellipses is the infamous 'Halle's comet' SC question, by the way. Nightmare!]
