Uranium, the heaviest of the stable, naturally-occurring chemical elements , is more abundant in the Earth's crust than silver, mercury, or iodine.

A) of the stable, naturally-occurring chemical elements
B) of the chemical elements to be stable and naturally occurring
C) of the elements that are stable and naturally occurring
D) stable and naturally occurring of the chemical elements
E) chemical elements stable and naturally occurring
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Between C & D. IMO C.

In D, naturally occurring 'of the' is awkward.
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Exactly ..!!

thanks for the explanation..!!

May I know how C is less clear? I agree A is more concise than C, and C is more wordy, but less clear? "that are stable and naturally occurring" is clear. isn't it? or am I missing something?
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GMAT Prep : Critical Reasoning Decoded

I'll suggest you go through OG13 sentence correction explanations when studying. Don't jump any question you get correctly. Take the pains to study the way the exam setters think and you will understand why they prefer certain structures to the other.

For example take a look at sentence 1 & 2 below:

1. The cute, cuddly monkey escaped from its cage
2. The cute and cuddly monkey escaped from its cage

Nothing is wrong with both sentences but the GMAT can throw both of them at you as options. After going through the OG explanations, you will get to understand that the GMAT prefers sentence 1 to sentence 2. Sentence 1 is more concise because it explains the idea with fewer words without losing the meaning.
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Thanks. Got it. A very good explanation indeed !
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GMAT Prep : Critical Reasoning Decoded

No. It's quite common to separate two adjectives or adjective phrases with only a comma when they precede a noun, as in "The cow is a beautiful, intelligent animal." Now, if we use those adjectives predicatively, by putting them at the end after the verb, we do need "and": "This cow is beautiful and intelligent."
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Harshgmat , good instincts. This question is problematic. You opened a can of worms. Or handed me a can of worms to open?

I suspect that the authors believed C to be quite different from A. I think the authors failed to draw the intended degree of distinction.

I reviewed all OG 2018 SC questions. Close calls are not as close as the one in this question.

In short, this question is not official and is probably too hard. I would not worry about it.

If we compare A and C directly it may be easier to notice that C subtly shifts emphasis away from the predicate in which the comparative abundance of uranium takes the spotlight.

In C, "stable and naturally occurring elements" and the predicate "more abundant than ..." have about equal weight. (A) leans much more towards predicate emphasis.

(A) Uranium, the heaviest of the stable, naturally-occurring chemical elements, is more abundant in the earth's crust than silver, mercury, or iodine.

(C) Uranium, the heaviest of the elements that are stable and naturally occurring, is more abundant in the earth's crust than silver, mercury, or iodine.

Descriptors that precede the noun elements in (A) both capture the other elements and allow uranium's comparative abundance to be the centerpiece.

In English, unless the author has deployed a different emphatic device, what comes at the end of the sentence gets the emphasis.*

In C, a lengthier noun description and "are" steal some of the heft from the thrust of the sentence as it is presented in A.

At the end of both C and A lie the other three elements. We likely can infer that the author intended to emphasize the comparative abundance of uranium.

One more tiny difference bears mention. (C) does not specify that the elements are "chemical." The other four options do. An element can be many things. We may know that uranium is a "chemical" element (or at least we know it is not, say, some "constituent part").

I suppose, however, for a person new to English, "chemical" would clarify "element." Perhaps "chemical" is weightier than it seems.

More to the point: the answer setup indicates that the author thinks that "chemical" matters.

I chose (A). Stylistically, it's a better sentence. In this instance, attributive adjectives that directly modify the noun are punchier than relative clause adjectives in part because the linking verb "is" leads to another adjective.

Further, C's structure requires a that-clause whose verb ARE, in turn, is a second instance of an inert and leaden "to be" verb.

Although concision is the least important of GMAT rules according to many, this particular source often tests obscure issues.

Option A must seem to contain some error, I think. I cannot explain the stats below otherwise. Why not A over C?

I hope that helps!

Analysis of the question

Statistics for the answers are
Option A = 49%
Option C = 40%

The percentage of respondents who chose C is very high. I doubt that the authors thought that C would be so tempting.

Had they known, I hope that they would have given a better explanation than this assertion: "Choice[] (C) reconstruct[s] the underlined portion with more words and less clarity than the original." Why less clarity?

That sort of explanation mirrors too many OEs.

Bothered, I mined data. In OG 2018, if the explanation of an option used only terms such as wordy, awkward, or confusing, I checked to see whether unmentioned but bigger errors existed.

23 options had explanations that were "style only." All 23 had other problems not listed in the OE (unidiomatic, not parallel, verb tense, pronoun errors, etc.).

Some options changed intended meaning very subtly, but none were as close in meaning to their corresponding correct answer as C is to A in this case.

This question's razor-edge decision point is likely too thin to qualify the question as sufficiently representative of a real GMAT question.

I intend no disrespect. These questions are very difficult to write. I think that the authors really believed that C was not a close call. These statistics indicate otherwise.

*In English the end of a sentence almost always carries the most emphasis. HERE, and HERE.

This and another question prompted my survey. In OG 2018, option explanations that consist only of "awkward, wordy, indirect, and confusing" but that have other errors are: 670D. 674A. 696A. 697C and D. 700E. 712C, D, and E. 724A. 727B, C, and E. 734D. 752E. 754A. 757E. 768A and B. 777E. 778A. 787D. 804D.
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