When automatic teller machines were first installed in the 1980s, bank

Question

When automatic teller machines were first installed in the 1980s, bank officials promised  they would be faster, more reliable, and less prone to make errors  than their human counterparts.

(A) they would be faster, more reliable, and less prone to make errors

(B) they would be faster, more reliable, and that they would be less prone for making errors

(C) the machines would be faster, more reliable, and less prone to make errors

(D) the machines were faster, more reliable, and errors would occur much less

(E) faster, more reliable machines, and that errors would be less prone

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Sushil117 · Answer

(A) they would be faster, more reliable, and less prone to make errors
"they" can refer back to bank officials which is the nearest subject. incorrect

(B) they would be faster, more reliable, and that they would be less prone for making errors
"faster, more ...and that " parallelism issue

(C) the machines would be faster, more reliable, and less prone to make errors
seems fine

(D) the machines were faster, more reliable, and errors would occur much less
"faster ,more ...and errors" parallelism error

(E) faster, more reliable machines, and that errors would be less prone
same as B
IMO C

Abhishek009 · Answer

"They" in (A) & (B) refers to bank officials and hence rejected.
"were in option" (D) is incorrect as it refers to past tense, hence rejected.
"errors would be less prone" is incorrect in option (E) hence rejected.

Correct Answer will hence be (C)

Bunuel · Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

C

Go through your checklist of potential errors. Is there a misplaced modifier here? No. Is there a pronoun problem? Well, wait a minute. There certainly is a pronoun here. Is it possible that the “they” could be ambiguous? As a matter of fact, “they” is obviously supposed to refer to the automatic teller machines, but it also could refer to the bank officials. Replacing “they” with “the machines” clarifies the sentence, which means we are down to C, D, or E, but C has a much more parallel construction.

When automatic teller machines were first installed in the 1980s, bank

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When automatic teller machines were first installed in the 1980s, bank

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