bradfris wrote:
Thanks NonYankee. I can see what you're saying, if a debate/decision/choice etc is binary, the or not
isn't necessary because its implied. In other words if not one, it must be the other.... and I actually agree. But my question is more about the conflict between an idiom ('whether or not') and the concision. Many idioms are not the most concise way of presenting an idea.
Perhaps it would be useful to outline what I think an idiom is (because I'm more than likely wrong): An idiom is a nuance of a language that allows us to speak/write in a way that isn't strictly grammatically correct.
I read your 800 debrief the other day too, well done!
Thanks, I hope you found my debrief interesting! Regarding idioms, we're in a same boat (pardon the idiom). I remember seeing "idiom" used as part of a SC answer explanation in
OG 12. The sentence said something like
the supreme court declared (something) unconstitutional, but the correct answer inverted the structure to be
the supreme court declared unconstitutional (something) because the "something" was a long, complex phrase. I had never thought of
declaring something unconstitutional as idiomatic, but I guess that goes to show my understanding of idioms (in a linguistic sense) is quite limited. I grew up thinking idioms were simply the phrases misunderstood by
Amelia Bedilia.
The GMAT SC guidelines are something like the following (this is not necessarily the most current wording):
Choose the answer that produces the most effective sentence; this answer should be clear and exact, without awkwardness, ambiguity, redundancy, or grammatical error.Per those instructions, I don't think there's ever a time it would be desirable to add unneeded words to make something idiomatic. Knowledge of idioms would be helpful in knowing whether something is free of grammatical error, however.