The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house.

A. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house
B. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation of being haunted
C. mansion, that the mansion contained thirteen rooms, and said that it had a reputation for being haunted
D. mansion, said that it contained thirteen rooms and had a reputation for being a haunted house
E. mansion and said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and had the reputation of being haunted

Reputation 'for being' haunted is bad idiom. Drop A, C, and D.

In B, I think there is no problem for the reference of 'it', as it should logically refer to the mansion, as another thing as either the newspaper or the history would contain thirteen rooms. is rather insensible. However, the problem is the connector that'. Separating it from the main clause with a comma renders the entnece unparallel.

E must be the correct answer, in spite of its wordiness.
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Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down our options quickly so we know how to answer questions like this when they pop up on the GMAT! To begin, let's take a quick look at the question and highlight any major differences between the options in orange:

The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house.

A. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house
B. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation of being haunted
C. mansion, that the mansion contained thirteen rooms, and said that it had a reputation for being haunted
D. mansion, said that it contained thirteen rooms and had a reputation for being a haunted house
E. mansion and said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and had the reputation of being haunted

After a quick glance over the options, we have a few places we can focus on to narrow down our choices:

1. that it / that the mansion (pronouns & meaning)
2. that it had / said that it had / had (pronouns & parallelism)
3. for being / of being (idioms)

Let's start with #3 on our list because it's an "either/or" split. While it may seem like the phrases "had a reputation of" and "had a reputation for" are interchangeable, they are not. Deciding which one you use has to do with what comes after it:

had a reputation of X = X needs to be a verb phrase
He had a reputation of being late to class every Wednesday.
My dog has a reputation of going to the door every time I get home from work.

had a reputation for Y = Y needs to be a noun
He had a reputation for procrastination.
My cat has a reputation for nastiness.

Let's see how our options tackle this:

A. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house
B. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation of being haunted
C. mansion, that the mansion contained thirteen rooms, and said that it had a reputation for being haunted
D. mansion, said that it contained thirteen rooms and had a reputation for being a haunted house
E. mansion and said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and had the reputation of being haunted

We can eliminate options A, C, & D because "had a reputation for being" is not idiomatically correct. Now that we have it narrowed down to only 2 options, let's focus on the other items on the list. To make problems easier to spot, let's add in the non-underlined part also:

B. The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation of being haunted

This is INCORRECT because the structure of it is all wrong. It turns this into a giant list, where each item is attributed back to the verb "recounted." The newspaper didn't recount the number of rooms or the haunted reputation - it only recounted the history of the mansion. It also SAYS that the mansion has 13 rooms and might be haunted, but that's not part of the recounting. The pronouns "it" in each phrase are also problematic - it's not 100% clear if "it" is referring back to the mansion or the story??

E. The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion and said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and had the reputation of being haunted

This is CORRECT. It eliminates the vague "it" pronouns entirely, and it also clears up the "recounted" parts from the "said" parts.

There you have it - option E is our correct choice! By starting with the "either/or" split, we could eliminate 2-3 options right away, giving us more time to focus on the more intricate differences.


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.
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Official Explanation

Logical predication; Grammatical construction

The given sentence consists of three disjointed pieces; the second and third each begin with that. The verb recounted appropriately takes history as its object. Note that the two that-clauses that also appear, inappropriately, to be objects of the verb recount. Furthermore, the noun history and these that-clauses are not parallel.

Note that these that-clauses work better as objects of the verb said rather than the verb recount. The correct answer option will need to better integrate the two that-clauses into the sentence as a whole. A common way in which different thoughts are made into one sentence is by use of and. Choice E succeeds in creating an integrated sentence using and to combine three different thoughts.

A. In this choice, the two that-clauses inappropriately appear to be objects of the verb recount.

B. In this choice, the two that-clauses inappropriately appear to be objects of the verb recount.

C. In this choice, the first that-clause inappropriately appears to be the object of the verb recount.

D. In this choice, the referent of the pronoun it is unclear. Furthermore, had a reputation for being a haunted house is wordy and would be better phrased had the reputation of being haunted as in choice E.

E. Correct. This choice correctly uses the that-clause as the object of the verb said and uses the appropriate, less-wordy predicate had the reputation of being haunted.

The correct answer is E.

I will go with E

The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house.

A. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation for being a haunted house---wordy("that is" is unnessasary )and illogical(a haunted houses' reputation?)
B. mansion, that it contained thirteen rooms, and that it had a reputation of being haunted---same problem as A
C. mansion, that the mansion contained thirteen rooms, and said that it had a reputation for being haunted---(unpararrell)
D. mansion, said that it contained thirteen rooms and had a reputation for being a haunted house---fragment sentence/run on(The newspaper story accurately recounted.....,said that)
E. mansion and said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and had the reputation of being haunted---good

Both reputation for and reputation of are idiomatically correct.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/reputation

Choices (A), (B), and (C) all attempt to have a 3 piece list. What do we look for when we have lists? PARALLELISM. All three of these answer choices have very weird constructions.

The story recounted the history of x, that it contained y, and that it has a reputation.....

This list is not parallel. We have two "that's," and I'm not sure they make much sense anyway.

Eliminate (A), (B), and (C) for lack of parallelism

Between (D) and (E)...

(D) is grammatically incorrect for starting the second clause with "said." Further, there is no clear referent for the pronoun "it." Pronoun Error

(E) is kind of ugly in my opinion, but there is no firm error in the sentence. (E) avoids the use of pronouns. (E) is not in a list format, so there is no concern for parallelism. It's ugly, but it's our answer :/
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thoiugh i understand all choices have being as modifier , isnot gmat violating rule of never using being as modifier
here being modifies haunted house.

-Of being and for being - are not modifiers. Being is a gerund in this context and acts as the objet of the prepositions and therefore acceptable.
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"Of being haunted" certainly does create a modifier--it modifies "reputation," telling us that kind of reputation the mansion had. However, the GMAT doesn't have any strict rule against "being" in a modifier. It just tends to use "being" to make redundant and/or poorly-constructed phrases.
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can u give some og example where being is correct as modifier.thanks a lot

So I eliminated based on reputation of and reputation for and the fact that both are correct is unnerving, yet great new info. But I looked further into this and I think of and for imply different meanings when used with reputation.

I think reputation for is used after the article "a" whereas reputation of is used with the article "the". In addition, with regards to "being", the reputation of is the correct term, not a reputation for. I don't know the grammatical logic behind this (I get the difference, but I don't know how to define the difference), but can anyone explain this further?

Examples:
1) The company has a worldwide reputation for quality.
2) She has the reputation of being a good doctor.
Referring to: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dic ... reputation

Correct answer: E

A-C all create an inappropriate list ("recounted ... the history ..., that X ..., [and said] that Y").
D could be correct if "said" were changed to a modifier, e.g. "stating that ..." However, its construction makes it part of an incomplete list ("recounted ... said ... and [ ]"
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Hey @e-gmat, can you explain two things here please:

1) Use of of being and for being
2) Option E violates that that parallelism.

Hi, I will try to take a shot at this.

1) The use of of being and for being are not strong enough decision points. Moreover the actual variation is between reputation of and reputation for. Dmitry has pointed, in a few posts before, how both of them seem acceptable (usage wise) and thus it would be tough to eliminate options solely on this basis.
→ Lack of parallelism by making all the three clauses act as the object of the verb recount is the problem with A, B, and C.
In D, said is a verb and thus should be part of a proper clause.

2) Option E doesn't violate that that parallelism as it tries to get rid of if.
→An extended version of the sentence would read like this:
The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion and (The newspaper story) said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and (the mansion) had the reputation of being haunted.
→recounted is parallel to said (both are in simple past and have the same subject).
→contained is parallel to had (both are in simple past and have the same subject).

When that is used after said, that doesn't become part of any list, it rather starts a clause and the clause that follows is a complete sentence on its own - The newspaper story accurately recounted the history of the colonial mansion and said that the mansion contained thirteen rooms and had the reputation of being haunted.

Answer : E

Process of Elimination used.


A,B,C, D contain " , THAT" and ", SAID"

I believe this is the case of Comma Splice , Therefore, A,B,C,D are out straightaway. Someone correct me If i am wrong.

Two clauses are joined incorrectly using just a comma.

",which" okay
",that" NG

Actually, 'it' does have a logical antecedent. The only suitor for 'it' from the available nouns - newspaper story, history, and mansion - is mansion.

Hello AyeeshaJ,
Sincere apologies for the late revert.

1) It is not about the phrase of being and for being. The phrases that we need to consider are reputation of and reputation for. Now, the usage of being is correct in the sentence because it has been used as a verb-ing noun word.


2) There is no parallelism violation in Choice E with the omission of that before the verb had. The subject the mansion has two verbs - contained and had. These two verbs are properly connected by the connector and. The parallelism is maintained here.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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Hey egmat
Choice E has correct parallel structure - "the mansion contained X and had Y"
I noticed the omission of the comma before the 'and' - I guess it isn't mandatory as long as we know what the parallel entities are?
But would this choice be ruled out in the presence of a better choice that has the right punctuation?

she recount the story of this class that the class has got good reward.
"that clause" can be attributive modifying "story".
"that it contain..." grammatically work as an adjective modifying "history". but logically we can not have this modification. the history that it contain 3 room mean that in the past it has 3 rooms and now dont have

that is why choice A, B, and C is wrong.

EMPOWERgmatVerbal, I don't understand how 'that' in option A acts as an object for the verb 'recount'

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