The increase in the number of American households viewing telecasts of

Official solution from Veritas Prep.

If you’ve been following sound sentence correction strategy, you probably noticed the 3-2 split between “implies” and “imply” and slashed and burned your way to the phrase:

The increase in the number of American households viewing telecasts of NASCAR races implies…

“In the number” modifies “increases”; “of American households” modifies “number”; “viewing telecasts” modifies “households”; and “of NASCAR races” modifies “telecasts.” “The increase” is the subject of the verb, which must be “implies.” That would lead you to eliminate answer choices A and B.

From there, however, there exists quite a bit of reading to do after “implies.” Did you also notice the 3-2 split on the back end? You’re being asked to decide between “but” and “but that”—a classic sentence construction Decision Point. When you need to decide between connectors, it’s helpful to use an offshoot of the slash-and-burn strategy, filling in the details of each portion to be connected with variables to test just that connection:

The increase implies X, but the number of races indicates Y.
vs.
The increase implies X, but that the number of races indicates Y.

The simple “but” is correct and “but that” is wrong. As you can see above, it simply does not provide a parallel connection, so answer choice E is correct.

The increase in the number of American households viewing telecasts of NASCAR races imply that the motorsport will soon supplant NFL football as the nation's most popular sport, but that the limited number of races each year compared to the NFL's hundreds of games indicates that fans will continue to watch football at a significantly higher rate.

A) imply that the motorsport will soon supplant NFL football as the nation's most popular sport, but that

B) imply that the motorsport is soon supplanting NFL football as the nation's most popular sport, but

C) implies that the motorsport will soon supplant NFL football as the nation's most popular sport, but that

D) implies that the motorsport is soon supplanting NFL football as the nation's most popular sport, but that

E) implies that the motorsport will soon supplant NFL football as the nation's most popular sport, but

Notwithstanding the unsound and ugly 'motor sport is soon supplanting' in D:

The reason why D is wrong is more that the 'but that' structure gives an absurd twist to the meaning. We normally mean to say that if there are two factors namely X and Y caused by some A factor, then we have to use the 'but that ' structure for both the factors X and Y to maintain parallelism. However, if the Y factor is not relevant or is extraneous to the A factor, then using the 'but that' structure will give an absurd meaning. To wit:

The increase in the number implies that the motorsport is soon supplanting -- Ok this is acceptable because the survey is about NASCAR races and the result is also about the motor race. However, the second factor namely that the NFL viewership will outperform the races viewership is not suggested by the survey; the second part is an extraneous and independent comment and therefore D is wrong.
You might see where but that is going to be relevant to //ism.
A report by GMAC indicates that Asians outperform both Americans and Europeans in Quants, but that the Asians underperform in Verbals.
Here one cannot do away with the 'but that' structure. If you drop the 'but that' phrase in the second factor, then the sentence will be un//.

Good question. Seems like Official questions.

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