Small business owners play important roles

Question

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists;  they hire both older and younger workers; and occasionally bring  new life to dilapidated shopping centers.

A) they hire both older and younger workers and occasionally bring

B) it hires both older and younger workers and occasionally brings

C) hiring both older and younger workers; and occasionally bring

D) hiring both older and younger workers; and occasionally bringing

E) they are hiring both older and younger workers and occasionally bringing

sravan25 · Answer

Can anyone explain the reason why answer is D ?
Thanks in advance

nikhilsehgal · Answer

Option A and E using "they" that does not have the clear antecedent - Could be refer back to - business owners, manufacturers and artist....

Option B uses "it" - wrong because we have business owner's' in the sentence so we need plural.
Between option C and D - OA has to be D because of parallelism i.e hiring and bringing.

Hope it helps.

UrsTruly · Answer

Semi colon connects two independent clauses, Right? I doubt "D" is correct, as I don't think the second part (after the colon) is an independent clause. It would be great if somebody can explain the correctness of option "D".

Thanks,
Rushil

Thanks,
Rushil

anandrajakrishnan · Answer

THis is a stright case of parallelism. Small business owners  verb , providing...;hiring...; and occasionlly bringing...

sony26 · Answer

Even i doubt  D  is the correct answer.

Semi colon does connect two independent clauses that are closely connected in thought.
Going with the above, IMO  A  should be the answer.

Elimination of rest is as mentioned before.

Cheers
Sony

lequanftu26 · Answer

IMO, semicolon can be used to separate examples when using colon causes confusion. 
Hence, it should be D as OA.

sony26 · Answer

Where is the example in D??

Cheers
Sony

ramannanda9 · Answer

D,

providing  products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists;
 hiring  both older and younger workers; 
and 
occasionally  bringing

Parallelism of verb-ing forms ....

BeckyRobinsonTPR · Answer

a semicolon can be used to separate the items in a list when those list items also contain commas. The trick is the semicolon before the and as well this is a trick I have seen used several times on the official GMAT.

animanga008 · Answer

semicolon black magic. I didn't think semicolons could be used like commas

Valerun · Answer

The question is incorrect, an independant clause requires a subject+ verb, so the answer cannot be B, C or D as they are fragments. A+E provide no antecedent to the pronoun but would be preferable, although incorrect, to B C and D which are grammatically incorrect. Apart from being wrong, the preferable replacement for a common on the gmat would be a dash.

Clearly this is not an offical question, you should be careful with that

Clearly this is not an offical question, you should be careful with that

sivasanjeev · Answer

The missing semicolon " ; " in the option A is the reason why I chose option 'A'. However, after checking the original sentence, I am perfectly fine with option 'D' being the correct choice.   Just realized that 'A' is laden with errors. Corrected those errors in the end.

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists; they hire both older and younger workers; and occasionally bring new life to dilapidated shopping centers.

A) they hire both older and younger workers and occasionally bring

D) hiring both older and younger workers; and occasionally bringing

My two cents -- Many of you said that 'they' doesn't have a proper antecedent.
If, there is no semicolon in the given sentence as stated in option A, then we have two independent clauses connected by a semicolon. So, "they" can still refer to subject of the first clause (as both these clauses, though independent, are still connected by closely related idea)

I will correct the sentence, in which case 'A' can be the answer. Note the highlighted words.

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers,  and  independent craftsman as well as international artists; they hire both older and younger workers occasionally  bringing  new life to dilapidated shopping centers.

Clauses separated by a ";" should be parallel and should also be closely related.

Nevertheless 'D' is the correct option--> nicely disguised parallelism.

shriramvelamuri · Answer

I am stunned and suprised. How come D is the answer. The last part of the sentence.. '  ; and occasionally bringing  ' cannot stand on it own because it has and at the beginning.

This is clear flaw in the usage of semicolon.

Please educate me.

mridupawandas · Answer

the option D maintains the parallelism of the whole statement so it is the answer

aviram · Answer

Nice question....I was stumped for a second. The semi colon is used as a super comma, because there is a list within the parent list. So what we want is 'providing..., hiring..., and bringing...', which is answer D.

jwang27 · Answer

Can someone find a single instance of a problem either in the OG or GMATPrep that tests the use of semicolons for lists? I have never seen it.

Konstantin1983 · Answer

Hi jwang27! I think you are looking for this problem. Moreover, i suspect that question under discussion is a "brother" of OG question below. Hope it helps! tropical-bats-play-important-roles-in-the-rain-forest-132440.html

mvictor · Answer

modifiers must be properly connected
here we have a list of 3 modifiers. only in D the list of modifiers is given correctly.

DharLog · Answer

Really. No one explained why D is correct option. Semicolon does not allow me to choose it as a right answer.

Small business owners play important roles in a community, providing products from local manufacturers, independent craftsman as well as international artists ,  hiring both older and younger workers and occasionally bringing new life to dilapidated shopping centers - this sentence is fine, but semicolon... ?

But if it is allowed to use semicolons in list, D is fine

Small business owners play important roles

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Small business owners play important roles

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

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My Rewards