shikhar wrote:
The Baldrick Manufacturing Company has for several years followed a policy aimed at decreasing operating costs and improving the efficiency of its distribution system.
(A) aimed at decreasing operating costs and improving
(B) aimed at the decreasing of operating costs and to improve
(C) aiming at the decreasing of operating costs and improving
(D) the aim of which is the decreasing of operating costs and improving
(E) with the aim to decrease operating costs and to improve
Let's go through all the options:
(A) "aimed at decreasing operating costs and improving"
This option correctly uses the phrase "aimed at" followed by gerunds ("decreasing" and "improving"), which maintains parallelism and proper grammatical structure.
(B) "aimed at the decreasing of operating costs and to improve"
This option is incorrect because it breaks parallelism. The structure after "aimed at" should be consistent, but here we have "the decreasing of operating costs" and "to improve", which do not match.
(C) "aiming at the decreasing of operating costs and improving"
This option is incorrect because it also breaks parallelism (for the same reason as option B) and changes the tense of "aimed" to "aiming," which is unnecessary.
(D) "the aim of which is the decreasing of operating costs and improving"
This option is incorrect because it uses a more awkward and convoluted structure to express the same meaning that can be more simply and directly expressed with "aimed at".
(E) "with the aim to decrease operating costs and to improve"
This option, while not grammatically incorrect, is less concise and direct than option A. Furthermore, "aimed at" is a more idiomatic expression in English than "with the aim to."
Overall, option A is the most clear, concise, and grammatically correct.