This process resulted in a total of 15 new townships: of which, to dat

Question

This process resulted in a total of 15 new townships:  of which, to date, 7 are still in existence.

(A) of which, to date, 7 are still in existence.

(B) of which number, 7 of the 15 are still, to date, in existence.

(C) of the number 15, 7, to date, are still in existence.

(D) to date of these 15, 7 are still in existence.

(E) to date, 7 of the 15 are still in existence.

This is such a trick question from Gmattest. Still not getting the explanation that why A is not correct: " The words  of which  at the beginning of the clause do not clearly refer to any antecedent " (???).   of Which   stands right behind  15 new townships , it clearly modifies for  15 new townships  and also makes no errors in meaning, why the OE states that ???

pqhai · Accepted Answer

Hello mahendru1992 I'm glad to help. First of all, please see underline the question :-D

Secondly, do NOT forget the colon ":" in the non-underlined portion. A is wrong at first sign if you know the rule that we NEVER use a colon before "which", we use ONLY a comma. This process resulted in a total of 15 new townships: of which, to date, 7 are still in existence. (A) of which, to date, 7 are still in existence. Wrong. Never use a colon before "which". (B) of which number, 7 of the 15 are still, to date, in existence. Wrong. Same error as in A. (C) of the number 15 , 7, to date, are still in existence. Wrong. "of the number 15" is awkward. (D) to date of these 15, 7 are still in existence. Wrong. "to date of these" is awkward. (E) to date, 7 of the 15 are still in existence. Correct. Clear and concise. Hope it helps.

PrashantPonde · Answer

In original sentence "of which" is intended to refer to "15 new townships". However the colon is separating two complete sentences. In this case the prepositional phrase "of which" cannot be preceded by ':' separating two sentences, it must be preceded by noun or noun phrase from the same sentence.

(A) of which, to date, 7 are still in existence.
 -- Sentence construction error as explained above. 
(B) of which number, 7 of the 15 are still, to date, in existence.
 -- Sentence construction error as explained above. 
(C) of the number 15, 7, to date, are still in existence.
 -- "of the number 15" is redundant. 
(D) to date of these 15, 7 are still in existence.
 -- "to date of these 15" is incorrect. to date is incorrectly modifying 15. 
(E) to date, 7 of the 15 are still in existence.
 -- this is the correct choice with the errors mentioned above.

Hence choice(E) is the answer.

TGC · Answer

How the colon is separating two complete sentences.IMO the clause after colon is not stand alone and according to rules it is not expected to be stand alone.Moreover,the clause after colon IMO is correctly modifying the number "15".

Meaning = 15 of which ,to date ,7 are still in existence .

What is wrong with that????

pqhai · Answer

Hello Mahendru1992

The colon (:) provides further explanation for what comes before it. For example, you can use a colon to equate  a list  with its components. It means you can understand the sentence even when it doesn't come with the portion after the colon. For this question, if you ignore the portion after the colon, the intended meaning will be not clear.

Furthermore, we never use a colon (:) before a relative clause that begins with "which", for instance. The only connecting punctuation we can use is the comma. Simply, that's the rule.

Hope it helps.

EMPOWERgmatVerbal · Answer

Hi mahendru1992,

Thank you for your question. This is a tricky one, but the main problem with has to do with redundancy.

The sentence is contrasting two things: how many townships were formed (15) vs. how many still exist (7). Since the sentence starts the comparison by telling you there are 15 townships to begin with, you don't need to repeat that number later on. By repeating the number 15, it can be overly wordy and confusing to readers.

Since all of the answers except A repeat the number 15, which is redundant,  A is the correct answer.

Also, to answer concerns about the colon:
The colon is being used in this sentence to show a stark break or contrast. I understand that we don't typically use it after the word "which," but in this case it's more of a stylistic choice to visually show contrast in information. So for now, let's ignore the colon issue, especially because it's not underlined anyway.

DLFC7A626 · Answer

This question requires phrasing that will clearly relate the numbers seven and fifteen to each other, and correctly place the temporal marker to date.

(A) The words of which at the beginning of the clause do not clearly refer to any antecedent.

(B) The words of which at the beginning of the clause do not clearly refer to any antecedent, and the parenthetical expression to date is awkward and unnecessary.

(C) The word number in the first part of the clause is redundant, and the string of parenthetical expressions – 7, to date – makes the clause awkward and unclear.

(D) The phrase to date is misplaced and seems to refer to these 15 rather than any appropriate temporal marker.

(E) Correct. The phrase to date is correctly set off by itself, the phrase 7 of the 15 clearly positions the two numbers relative to each other.

The correct answer is E

MBAHanover2018 · Answer

great explanation thank you but I have one question how would you manage time during the exam to do this analysis?

VerbalBot · Answer

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This process resulted in a total of 15 new townships: of which, to dat

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This process resulted in a total of 15 new townships: of which, to dat

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