Rather than ignore a company that seems about to fail, investment anal

Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down our options to the right answer! To begin, here's the original question with major differences highlighted in orange:

Rather than ignore a company that seems about to fail, investment analysts should recognize that its reorganization and recent uptick in revenue, combined with its dynamic new leadership, indicate that the firm’s prospects must be taken seriously.

A. Rather than ignore a company that seems about to fail,
B. Rather than ignoring a company that is about to seemingly fail,
C. Instead of a company that is seemingly about to fail being ignored,
D. Instead of ignore a company that seems about to fail,
E. In place of ignoring a company’s imminent failure seemingly about to occur,

After a quick scan over the options, a few key differences jump out:

1. Rather than / Instead of / In place of (Idioms & Meaning)
2. ignore / ignored / ignoring (Subject-Verb Agreement & Parallelism)
3. that seems about to fail / that is about to seemingly fail / that is seemingly about to fail / imminent failure seemingly about to occur (Wordiness)

Let's start with #1 on our list because it will eliminate 2-3 options right away. While it might seem like the phrases "rather than" and "instead of" could be interchangeable, they are not:

Rather than = shows preference of one item/action over another
Instead of / In place of = one item/action replaces another

For this sentence, it makes more sense to say that investment analysts should prefer one action over another. Therefore, using the phrase "rather than" makes more sense here:

A. Rather than ignore a company that seems about to fail,
B. Rather than ignoring a company that is about to seemingly fail,
C. Instead of a company that is seemingly about to fail being ignored,
D. Instead of ignore a company that seems about to fail,
E. In place of ignoring a company’s imminent failure seemingly about to occur,

We can eliminate options C, D, & E because the phrases "instead of" and "in place of" don't convey the intended meaning.

Now that we've narrowed it down to only 2 options, let's tackle #2 on our list: ignoring/ignore/ignored. This is actually an issue with parallelism! To make this easier to spot, we've added the non-underlined portion for you. Here's how they shake down:

A. Rather than ignore a company that seems about to fail, investment analysts should recognize that its reorganization and recent uptick in revenue, combined with its dynamic new leadership, indicate that the firm’s prospects must be taken seriously.
This is CORRECT! The two actions being compared here are written using parallel verbs (ignore/recognize).

B. Rather than ignoring a company that is about to seemingly fail, investment analysts should recognize that its reorganization and recent uptick in revenue, combined with its dynamic new leadership, indicate that the firm’s prospects must be taken seriously.
This is INCORRECT because the two actions being compared are not written using parallel verbs (ignoring/recognize).

There you have it - option A was the correct choice after all!


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