OFFICIAL EXPLANATIONProject SC Butler: Day 189: Sentence Correction (SC1)
I can tell that I am working with people who have just begun to study and who have been studying for awhile.
I want everyone to feel welcome to participate.
I want everyone to feel welcome, full stop.
At times I need to split my answers into the condensed version and the lengthy version. This question is one of those times.
• QUICK POEQuote:
Varieties of influenza range in severity from mild flus, treatable with bed rest and lasting only a few days, to acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
A) mild flus, treatable with bed rest and lasting only a few days, to
B) mild flus, treatable with bed rest and last only a few days, to
C) mild flus, treatable with bed rest, and they last only a few days,
D) those mild flus, able to be treated with bed rest and in duration only a few days, to those
E) those mild flus which are treatable with bed rest and which last only a few days to those
• Split #1: "those" is unnecessary and illogicalOptions D and E incorrectly repeat a "new and different" copy of "varieties" in order to refer to the low and high ends of the varieties' range.
→ redundant. We know we are listing "varieties." Nothing else has been mentioned. We do not need "those."
→ illogical.
Those mild flus makes it sound as if there are other mild flus . . . that are not included in this description of range. Wrong.
At the low end are "mild flus" (whose characteristics are described). At the high end are "acute forms" (whose characteristics are described.
Eliminate D and E
• Split #2: Idiom. From X TO YCorrect: From mild flus . . . to acute forms.Option C lacks the word TO, violates the idiomatic structure, and sounds ridiculous.
Eliminate C
• Split #3: ParallelismIn
From X to Y, X = mild flus and Y = acute forms
The descriptive words after "mild flus" are an adjective phrase describing that noun.
The phrase contains the word AND; accordingly, the things connected by the word AND must be parallel.
Option A: . . . mild flus,
treatable with bed rest AND
lasting only a few days . . .
The words in (A) are both adjectives and thus parallel.
treatable ↔ lastingOption B: . . . mild flus,
treatable with bed rest AND
last only a few days . . .
One word in (B) is an adjective and the other word is a verb.
Not parallel.Eliminate B.
By POE, the answer is A.• COMPLETE POEThe common idiom
from X to Y is in play, but that idiom does not help much except with (C).
All options except C state:
Varieties of influenza range
FROM mild flus (X). . . TO acute forms (Y)Now what? Well, obviously we are not going to ignore the rest of the underlined portion.
In all options, the adjective phrases that follow "mild flus" contain errors.
Those errors make X not parallel with Y, but I wouldn't go that far into the analysis.
The words that describe X contain all sorts of errors upon whose basis you can eliminate the option without getting into X/Y parallelism.
The underlined portion consists almost entirely of the words that describe the X element (mild flus).
In that description is a parallelism marker: the word AND.
Whatever the word AND connects must be parallel.
THE PROMPTQuote:
Varieties of influenza range in severity from mild flus, treatable with bed rest and lasting only a few days, to acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
THE OPTIONSQuote:
A) Varieties of influenza range in severity from mild flus, treatable with bed rest and lasting only a few days, to acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
• Nothing seems wrong. The structure is "Varieties . . . range . . . from X to Y." That works. In particular:
Varieties of influenza range . . . from [adjective + noun, adjective phrase] to [adjective + noun, adjective phrase]
• true, the words used to describe "mild flus" and "acute forms" are not identical. Adjective phrases do not need to be constructed identically to maintain parallelism. Adjective phrases need to be adjective phrases to maintain parallelism.
We should not worry about X and Y. We should worry about what follows the X element (mild flus).
• Is the description of the X element (of
mild flus) okay?
-- Yes. The phrases that describe the noun "mild flus" are both adjective phrases:
-- (1)
treatable with bed rest and (2)
lasting only a few days KEEP
Quote:
B) Varieties of influenza range in severity from mild flus, treatable with bed rest and last only a few days, to acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
•
treatable with bed rest, an adjective phrase, and the
verb last [only a few days] are not parallel
If you are not sure, keep (B), and compare it to other options at the end. Otherwise,
ELIMINATE B
Quote:
C) Varieties of influenza range in severity from mild flus, treatable with bed rest, and they last only a few days, [TO] acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
• In from X to Y, the word TO is missing. Fatal error.
-- In English, we cannot indicate "from one end to the other" (range) without the TO. The moment you catch this error, move on.
-- It's okay if you missed the error. Our brains are trained to "fill in" gaps. Now you know that you must look for omissions of small words. (One such small omission on the GMAT comes in options that use "because" when "because of" is needed or vice versa. The rest of the sentence will be acceptable. GMAC is counting on us to miss the tiny error.)
• if we are listing two items (descriptions of mild flus), we do not need a comma before the AND
• NOT PARALLEL: the things that follow the X element are not parallel with one another
→ an adjective phrase is not parallel to an independent clause
-- "treatable with bed rest" = adjective
phrase (NO verb)
-- "they last only a few days" = a full
clause with a subject and a verb (always)
they last . . . is an independent clause that is not itself a
modifier of "mild flus."
The sentence tells us about mild flus, but the thing is a sentence, not an adjectivial modifier.
Other grammar errors exist. I think I've picked the two that are easiest to spot.
One other error that might be easy to spot is the incorrect insertion of "they last. . . "
→ nonsensical meaning
-- , and they last . . . must refer to
varieties because "last" is a second verb and only the noun
varieties has a verb (range).
-- That situation creates nonsense:
varieties do not last only a few days.
Mild flus last only a few days. If all varieties lasted a few days, then the acute forms would go away rather than occasionally prove fatal.
→ what precedes the [comma + and] is NOT an independent clause as it should be
Varieties of influenza range FROM mild flus, treatable with bed rest, AND they last . . .
The words in red are not an independent clause. In this context, the word "and" would be a "coordinating conjunction"—a FANBOY, a thing that joins two independent clauses.
ELIMINATE C
Quote:
D) Varieties of influenza range in severity from those mild flus, able to be treated with bed rest and in duration only a few days, to those acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
•
Those is incorrect
-- in the phrases
those mild flus and
those acute forms, the word "those" is a demonstrative adjective that points to its noun, but that pointing is either redundant or illogical.
→ illogical. We are listing varieties. We do not need "those" unless we are trying to exclude some mild flus and some acute forms. The context indicates that the lower and upper extremes of the range have been described fully: all mild flus are treatable bed rest, for example.
→ redundant. The word "those" makes a different copy of the noun
varieties, but when we list varieties we know that the things we list are . . . well,
varieties. There is no need to use
those in order to repeat "varieties."
•
able to be treated is much worse than "treatable": the former is longer, more awkward, and less idiomatic than the latter.
•
in duration only a few days is inferior to "lasting." The phrase is also ungrammatical.
→ something that lasts for a period of time is not "in duration" Something
has a duration of→ corrected: . . .
mild flus . . . having a duration of only a few daysELIMINATE D
Quote:
E) Varieties of influenza range in severity from those mild flus which are treatable with bed rest and which last only a few days to those acute forms, such as bacterial pneumonia, that are potentially fatal.
• as is the case in option D, the word
those is unnecessary and redundant
•
eakabuah , you are correct: both which-clauses should be preceded by a comma
-- at present, if an answer lacks a comma before
which, be extremely suspicious.
For now, the that/which distinction holds. I myself would not choose an answer that contained a which without commas unless the other four options contained 100% fatal answers.
Reasons that I advise you to stay with the guideline (that and which are not the same)?
-- 1) no correct official answer of which I know has ever used a "which-clause" without a comma.
-- 2) Two (maybe three?) OEs mention that the distinction between
that and
which is heavily contested, as if to suggest that GMAC might be ignoring the distinction.
Those comments led many people to conclude that GMAC was not interested in the which/that distinction any more.
HOWEVER
-- 3) In May 2019, in
OG 2020, GMAC issued a new question, SC # 824, in which the that/which distinction is tested.
That very hard official question is
here.
-- 4) Conclusion: for now, if you can avoid an answer with a which-clause but no preceding comma, do so.
ELIMINATE E
The correct answer is ACOMMENTS Most of these explanations are excellent. A couple have minor errors.
All have the correct answer. And it's Sunday. So kudos to all.
*Myth: The essential modifier that is never preceded or set off by commas.
Not true. Sometimes words that must be set off by commas are allowed to intervene between a noun and its that-clause. An exception is in this very sentence.
A short intervening phrase, including one that lists an example ["such as . . ."] can interrupt the connection between the noun "acute forms" and its essential modifier "that are potentially fatal." You will rarely see a comma before that. Just know that if you do, that construction is not automatically incorrect.
close
09 Nov 2019, 00:46
45%
(medium)
40%
(01:33)
wrong 
