578vishnu
It is pertinent to note that when you come across two answer choices which are grammatically correct, however, you aren’t unable to decide which one to chose - ALWAYS GO WITH THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE SENTENCE.
Even though C is grammatically correct, it changes the entire meaning of the sentence.
Thanks
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578vishnu , the GMAT does not give grammatical questions whose meanings are equally valid.
I am not sure what the source of your assertion is. It's probably a good idea to include a source.
The three experts below collectively possess more than forty years of experience teaching the GMAT. They say that there is nothing special about option A.
GMATNinja ,
HERE, Dmitry Farber,
here, and Ron Purewal,
HERE.Very frequently we can figure out meaning from the non-underlined portion of the prompt, a fact that may make it seem as if option A determines meaning.
(To state the obvious: Option A is the underlined portion of the prompt.)
Option A may happen to fit grammatically and rhetorically 20% of the time, but that fact does not mean that option A is the originally intended meaning.
The problem created is this: I have watched too many people reject a correct official answer because although grammatical (and better than any of the other four answers), its meaning departed or seemed to depart from the meaning in option A.
There is nothing special about option A.
If Options B, C, and E are equally correct in this question, then something is wrong with the question.
This sort of situation does not occur on the GMAT.
The following quotation comes from The GMAT Official Guide 2020 (John Wiley & Sons, 2019, p 775):
Quote:
Given that all Sentence Correction questions are presented out of context, there may be no basis for certainty about which of several possible interpretations the writer intended to convey.You will not be given multiple equally good versions of a sentence and asked to guess which one accurately represents the writer's true intention. I will follow the advice of GMAC.
I will think about this question. It may belong in the archive.
Option B is inferior to C and E. Between C and E? Tough call.
The only way to rescue this question, I think, is to argue that the phrasing at the very end of option C leaves a slight possibility of ambiguity: does
their refer to the strength of the metals or to the strength of the buildings?