The 1950 Graver Tank & Manufacturing Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. Sup

I disqualified option A because of the usage of plural "toward" and went for option E because of the usage of singular "towards.

But then, i have my ressrvations about option E because of the "they" at the terminal part. I think "it" should be accurate as the subject of the clause there is "the doctrine of equivalents" - a singular subject.

I think we need more clarification as to why A is most correct

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E is wrong because it changes the meaning of the sentence. I have seen the GMAT use this parallelism trap multiple times in the difficult questions.

The decision of the supreme court went a long way toward establishing.... and explaining. The clause "which allows patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction" modifies the preceding clause and provides more information. By changing "allows" to "allowing", the sentence implies that the decision of the supreme court went a long way toward establishing, allowing, and explaining (which is not the case).

The 1950 Graver Tank & Manufacturing Co. v. Linde Air Products Co. Supreme Court decision went a long way toward establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, which allows patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction, and explaining how and when it was to be used.

A. toward establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, which allows patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction, and explaining how and when it was

B. toward establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, which allow patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction, and to explain how and when it was

C. towards the establishment of the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, which allows patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction, and explaining how and when it was

D. toward establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, which allows patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction, and explained how and when they were

E. towards establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents, allowing patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction, and explaining how and when they were[/quote]


Answer:
This question can actually be solved without getting into the mess of toward vs towards, though they seem as easy elimination but not error proof.

So the question is basically saying,
The 1950 Supreme Court decision went a long way TOWARD/TOWARDS (lets keep both for now)
a. establishing the propriety of the doctrine of equivalents
and
b. explaining how and when it was to be used

notice that 'which allows patent law to accommodate reason outside of its exact jurisdiction' is modifying the doctrine (of equivalent in prepositional phrase, so which can reach back) and also it is enclosed within double commas which here serve as the start and end of the modifier. Also, 'how and when it (read it as doctrine) was to be used' is explained by Supreme court decision and not by doctrine itself.

So clearly point a and point b above,are the two consequences of supreme court action, hence they both should be parallel.

Choice A): seems alright, clearly 'it' in 'explaining how and when it was' refers to doctrine
Choice B): establishing and to explain are not parallel, definitely wrong.
Choice C): establishment and explaining are not parallel, again wrong.
Choice D): here the major problem is they (as verb-ing and verb-ed can be parallel), clearly they cant refere to doctrine as its singular, again wrong answer
Choice E): Again a they, wrong answer.

So clearly our right answer is A.


Hit Kudos, if you like the explanation.

Hi,
I am one of the 37% who answered incorrectly and chose E.
The reason why I chose E is the use of singular towards and option C does not have parallel phrases. E has an ambiguous "they" but I still chose it. Could you please explain why use of toward is right?
Thanks.

Can anyone please explain?

I chose E.
"they" is referring to air products.
In A : what is "it" referring to?

I did the same thing. Although I didn't spend long enough on the question to catch the ambigious "they". I googled this, and apparently toward and towards are exactly the same!?! Surprised by that, and wish I could confirm this with a GMAT source.

You are correct, but that was already mentioned in the discussion. I wanted to add something that hadn't already been discussed given that the parallelism trap is quite common in mid-700 level question and one should always be alert to the shift in meaning.

How come 'decision' and 'toward' are correct in this sentence. Shouldnt it be towards instead of toward?

As mentioned earlier in the thread, toward and towards are both correct, mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably. The difference in spelling can be attributed to the UK English and the US English spelling certain words differently. (analyze vs analyse)

I believe that we should not get confused with toward/towards because toward is not the verb in above sentence. Stop looking for SV error with toward in above sentence.

Establishing and explaining should be parallel. This eliminates options b, c and d. The verb at the end of the of the underlined part should be singular since doctrine is singular.

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(same as in D)

Choice A is correct

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Experts...can you please let us know the correct OA to this question....as per parallelism we are getting E as correct answer.

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guptakashish02 "it" refers to the court's decision. You don't use air products to explain patent law.

AN12 While "E" correctly has establishing and explaining in parallel, the court's ruling is singular. They did not make multiple decisions on the court case; just one. The pronoun in the blank: "explaining how and when ___ was to be used" must refer to the court's decision, which is a singular noun.

Toward and toward are interchangeable in the English language, and one is not more correct than the other. Not sure where this question came from.

Toward and Towards are the same and can be used interchangeably??? Wow!

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I am quite surprised you didnt make mention of the significant distinctive features of options A and E which are "it" and "they", respectively.

What do those pronouns refer to and are they correctly used?

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daagh kindly give your expert opinion

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