To Josephine Baker, Paris was her home long before it was fashionable

"Expatriate" isn't a modifier in C, so that's not the issue there.

Answer C here seems technically fine to me, but it's very awkward writing. It reads like the words are in the wrong order, because the sentence really means to describe when it was "fashionable to be an expatriate", so answer C becomes confusing when "expatriate" comes before "fashionable". I say it's technically correct, because we can use infinitive verb forms ("to + [verb]") as noun subjects of a sentence, but it's much more common to use gerunds ("[verb] + -ing"). So these sentences are both grammatically fine:

To dance is fun.
Dancing is fun.

but the second sentence, using the gerund "dancing", is the version you would almost always see. It depends on the sentence, but using these "to+verb" constructions as a subject usually sounds overly formal and strange. Rewording your sentence slightly, you could say "To get a high score requires hard work", and that wouldn't be too unusual of a sentence (grammatically it's fine), but it would be much more common to say "Getting a high score requires hard work". Because of that, in the original question, answer C would be slightly improved if "to be" was replaced with "being", but it still would have the word order issue I mentioned above. The structure of choices D and E is different from that in C, and in those answer choices, only "to be" makes sense, as I assume has been explained in earliers posts.

Hello Experts,

I understand that choice D in this question is correct and others are incorrect but I rejected choice D because of below reason. I want to understand if my thought process from meaning perspective is correct.

Original sentense sequence of events are:
First - JB considered Paris her home
Second - Living in Paris as expat became Fashion
Third - She remained in France during WW2...(meaning WW2 happened after it became fashion to live in Paris as expat).

According to Choice D, the sequence of events are:
First: JB considered Paris her home, and she remained in France during WW2...(both actions happened in parallel before it became fashion to live in Paris as expat)
Second: It became fashion to live in Paris as expat.

I rejected choice D (although I know gramatically its the correct choice) because this choice changes the sequence of events. I have noticed that for 700+ questions the answer choice that looks very straightforward often remains incorrect. This was the other reason for rejecting choice D.

Apart from the awkwardness, is there anything else that makes option C incorrect?
I read that the structure of option C is - Clause 1 + Modifier + Clause 2 and hence it is incorrect. Is it always the case that we need to keep the clauses as close as possible? If so, is it true only for 'AND' conjunction or for all the conjunctions as well? Please explain with examples. Thanks!

cc: GMATNinja

hey guys,

Could you elaborate a little bit on KarishmaB explanation? More specifically I want to ask about B.

1. What is double stacked phrase?
2. When is it necessary?
3. Why we can't use it here?

Below you will find what KarishmaB wrote about it.

(B) For Josephine Baker, long before it was fashionable to be an expatriate, Paris was her home

The double stacked phrases ("for J..." and "long before it was...") are not suitable if not really necessary hence will avoid this option.

While using a modifier, we try to place the noun/verb etc. that it modifies close to it. When I want to tell you something about someone, I would like to tell you who that someone is as soon as possible for clarity. The communication should be as clear as possible.

Now look at this:

For a while, Anthony, the most intelligent boy in the class, thought that he would be made the class President.

'for a while' is a prepositional adverbial modifier modifying the verb 'thought'. He thought so for a while (answers 'how long?')
'the most intelligent boy in the class' is an appositive modifying Anthony.
This sentence is acceptable because when we mention the subject 'Anthony' after 'for a while', we know that 'for a while' is modifying the verb that will appear next. The appositive after 'Anthony' is ignored in our mind and we connect 'for a while' with 'thought.'

We can move the modifiers around.

For a while, the most intelligent boy in the class, Anthony thought that he would be made the class President.
Here the two modifiers are stacked (one on top of the other) and we have lost the 'for a while' and 'thought' connection. After 'for a while,' we have another modifier and now we don't know what is being referred to by which modifier. So we shouldn't put one modifier on top of another until and unless they are both modifying the same thing. Even then, we prefer to not stack them, if possible.
such as 'The most intelligent boy in the class, my favourite brother, Anthony thought that he would be made the class President.'
Both modifiers are stacked. It would be better to re-write this as:
'The most intelligent boy in the class, Anthony, my favourite brother, thought that he would be made the class President.'
Anthony is the subject and the two modifiers are around it.
Or we could rewrite it as 'The most intelligent boy in the class and my favourite brother, Anthony thought that he would be made the class President.'
In effect, there is only one modifier 'The most intelligent boy in the class and my favourite brother' and that is modifying Anthony.
There are many other ways of writing this, of course.

The most intelligent boy in the class, Anthony thought that he would be made the class President for a while.
Here 'for a while' seems to be modifying the closer verb 'made'. So it looks like he would be made class President for a while. So this is not acceptable.

The most intelligent boy in the class, Anthony thought, for a while, that he would be made the class President.
This is fine. Each modifier is modifying what it should.

Often, it may not be about what is correct, what is not. It may be about getting the best possible option (the one that makes things clear).

P. S. - If you tag me (by putting '@' front of my username), I would myself be able to help.

Yeah, (C) isn't terrible. There are a couple of good posts discussing those options earlier in the thread. I don't have much to add to these regarding the difference between "to be an expatriate was fashionable" vs. "it was fashionable to be an expatriate":

• https://gmatclub.com/forum/to-josephine-baker-paris-was-her-home-long-before-it-was-fashionable-64758-20.html#p2995687
• https://gmatclub.com/forum/to-josephine-baker-paris-was-her-home-long-before-it-was-fashionable-64758-40.html#p3097621

You could argue that putting the "long before" modifier up front makes the meaning a bit clearer because it gives the reader the important context right away. By the time we get to the subject (Josephine Baker) in (D), we already know, "okay, Josephine did something before it was fashionable to do so..." And what was that something? Making Paris her home.

In contrast, (C) starts with the independent clause, without any context. So before we get to the "long before" part, we're thinking, "okay, great, she made Paris her home -- that's a fun fact, but who cares?" Then we read the "long before" part and figure it out, but all of that is a little bit confusing, since (C) requires a bit more effort and concentration on the reader's part.

I wouldn't overreact to that issue, but it gives us one very tiny vote in favor of (D) over (C).

So yeah, there's not much to go by here. It's a tough decision and one that doesn't really have any interesting or useful takeaways, and it's also a very old question. So if you aren't convinced, don't worry too much about it!

Can you please tell that if both "was" and "remained" are past tense verbs, than how is it not parallel in verbs already?

GMATNinja In options A and B, can the introductory phrases "To Josephine Baker" and "For Josephine Baker" modify both the clauses?

In theory, there's no reason why a prepositional modifier such as "to" or "for" couldn't modify the following clause or clauses, but the phrases "to Josephine Baker" and "for Josephine Baker" don't make sense here.

Often, if I begin a sentence with the phrase "To [some person]" or "for [some person] the following clause will be something this person believes:

"To Tim, the Sixers have no hope of winning a title, because their coach likes to run injury-prone players into the ground."

Here, we get information about what Tim believes about the prospects of a basketball team. Makes sense.

But in the SC question, it doesn't make sense to write that Josephine Baker believed Paris was her home, because we know that she lived there. It WAS her home. No opinions needed!

All to say: sure, an opening modifier can potentially describe more than one clause. There's no rule about that. But context will tell us whether that modification is clear and logical. Here, it isn't. Simple as that.

I hope that helps!

As you said above that both the phrases "to Josephine Baker" and "for Josephine Baker" don't make sense here, so can I eliminate these choices based on this criteria? Will it be a valid reason?

Do two clauses have to have a similar structure for them to be parallel?