Trans World Entertainment Corporation, which owns the Record Town and Saturday Matinee retail chains, announced that since sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor, they will be closed . (A) that since sales of up to one-fourth of its stores are poor, they will be closed (B) it is closing up to one-fourth of its stores, which accounted for its poor sales (C) it was closing up to one fourth of its stores because of poor sales (D) to be closing, on account of poor sales, up to one-fourth of its stores (E) having poor sales, such that up to one-fourth of its stores will be closed https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/08/business/company-briefs-029980.html TRANS WORLD ENTERTAINMENT CORP., Albany, which owns the Record Town and Saturday Matinee retail chains, announced that it was closing up to one-fourth of its stores because of poor sales . The company closed 180 stores last year.

AjiteshArun AndrewN MartyMurray can you guys please explain how was closing is correct in this context?

Hi Nakul. The company "announced," basically said, what it "was" doing at the time. So, the use of "was closing" makes sense, If you swap "said" for "announced," the sentence seems quite natural with "was closing." Trans World Entertainment Corporation, which owns the Record Town and Saturday Matinee retail chains, said it was closing up to one fourth of its stores because of poor sales .

Let's say that some says, "I am happy." Reported speech: She said (in the past) that she was happy. Every once in a while it seems that the GMAT is not perfectly vigilant about using "that," although 99% of the time "that" is required to create the defining/limiting relative clause.

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