Two seismic shocks experienced in the United States of America in the

Hello, Aashi127 and others. In the interest of helping the community, I will provide a full analysis of the answer choices below.


The key to this question, as often proves the case in tougher SC questions, is to focus on meaning. The first three words provide a frame: two seismic shocks. The rest of the sentence needs to deliver on this setup. Ask yourself, What are these two shocks? The first is easy enough: the terrorist attacks. We expect to encounter the second after and. Instead, we get commencing. But the beginning of a chain reaction may not be the same as the reaction in its entirety—our second shock—and that proves to be the case here. The second seismic shock is the global financial crisis, and we understand the commencing phrase to be modifying that crisis: the collapse of Lehman Brothers in some way led to the global financial crisis.

Choice (A) contains parallel which clauses that correctly reach back to the subject before the comma, the terrorist attacks and the global financial crisis, respectively. About the only questionable aspect of the original sentence is the lack of a comma after and. The barebones version of our sentence would be the following:

Two seismic shocks affected the entire world—the terrorist attacks and, commencing with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the global financial crisis.

The comma would make it clear that the commencing phrase was NOT the second seismic shock, and clarity of meaning is always a plus. This peccadillo aside, I see nothing to gripe about in (A).

(B) loses sight of the dual seismic shocks and opts for a list instead, a list that contains, well, more than two items: terrorist attacks, long-drawn wars, commencement of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and, finally, the global financial crisis. The sentence breaks down altogether, and the answer ought to be easy to eliminate.

(C) appears to create a parallel consequence of the terrorist attacks by way of the phrase modifier. Apparently, the attacks both led to wars and started with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. That makes no sense. Furthermore, with the and already taken, we have no grammatical way to join our two seismic shocks with what remains. We get the terrorist attacks, [modifier], the global financial crisis. We do not even need to consider whether leading to on its own is justifiable. The pieces together do not fit.

(D) creates the opposite of what we just saw, a run-on sentence with multiple instances of and without a comma. Now, the terrorist attacks led to wars, commenced the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and which raised questions. Hmm... something is definitely off. The first which has been deleted, so why does the second remain? And where is our second seismic shock? The sentence is not at all clear and should be another easy elimination.

(E) also lacks the vital and to join the two seismic shocks. The sentence places one right after the other in an unclear manner. Also, the modifying phrase appears to be reaching back to the long-drawn wars of the previous clause, and I am pretty sure the sentence does not mean to convey that the wars started with the collapse of a business. (E), then, is gone.

There you have it. Of the five answer choices, only the original sentence can work. I hope this analysis may prove useful to others. As always, good luck with your studies.

- Andrew