When computer hackers released the “I Love You” virus in 2000, it race

Question

When computer hackers released the “I Love You” virus in 2000, it raced around the world  deleted music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses  to multiply itself and send itself and other emails onward.

(A) deleted music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses

(B) deleted music files and images, as well as raided email addresses

(C) deleting music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses

(D) deleting music files and images, as well as raided email addresses

(E) to delete music files and images, as well as to raid email addresses

Please help me the words among which the parallelism is formed in this sentence.

According to me, the list (which should follow parallelism) is : it raced around the world deleting music.... raided email addresses to multiply itself and sent itself .....
i.e. 2 main actions: virus raced and raided, hence raided in past to follow parallelism with raced!

However, this is not in accordance to the OA. Please help.

rockstar23 · Answer

Firstly, the virus does only one action and that is "it raced around the world". However, what follows after it, is an effect of its action. And those effects are "deleting and raiding". Actually there seems to be something wrong in this question. IMO there should be a comma after "it raced around the world," If its the case then option C perfectly modifies the preceding clause and hence to maintain the parallelism we need to use "deleting..as well as raiding..". However, in absence of comma, the -ING modifier modifies preceding noun which makes no sense in this case. So the actual answer is option C provided there is a comma. The final sentence should look something like this: When computer hackers released the “I Love You” virus in 2000, it raced around the world, deleting music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses to multiply itself and send itself and other emails onward. Hope it helps

patrickyip0520 · Answer

The meaning of the sentence should be kept in place. If you kept the list of verbs parallel, it would make the virus seem like it just raced around the world only. The meaning of the sentence is that the virus raced around the world doing this and that.

AR15J · Answer

How can choice C be correct ? verbing without comma modifies the previous noun(if noun is not subject) that is "world" in this case, and this is not the intended meaning(world is not deleting music files). 
Moreover, if the comma is there, deleting music files and raiding email addresses can not be the consequence of racing around the world. To me, choice E makes more sense

Please help!

Vishal Ahuja · Answer

E makes sense to me as well. The comma makes the difference.

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Abhishek009 · Answer

When computer hackers released the “I Love You” virus in 2000, it raced around the world 
 deleting  music files and images, as well as 
 raiding  email addresses to multiply itself and send itself and other emails onward.

(C) presents correct parallelism, hence this is our answer....

daagh · Answer

When computer hackers released the “I Love You” virus in 2000, it raced around the world  deleted music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses  to multiply it and send itself and other emails onward.

A) deleted music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses
B) deleted music files and images, as well as raided email addresses
C) deleting music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses
D) deleting music files and images, as well as raided email addresses
E) to delete music files and images, as well as to raid email addresses

The use of a comma before ' as well as' is rather dubious. Normally when you cite two factors, setting off by a comma before the prepositional phrase 'as well as' implies that one can dispense with the second factor as non-essential. In this case, if we set off the second factor, then the meaning is totally altered. Yet again, the veracity of the prepositional phrase itself is questionable, since the second factor is in no way inferior or secondary to the first one. The correct conjugation should have been with the co-coordinator 'and' rather than 'as well as'. That aside,

A is a classic a run-on without a conjunction between 'world' and 'deleted'. 
B is unparallel, without a comma after 'world'. The use of 'as well as', a prepositional phrase for 'and' is ungrammatical. 
C: if 'deleting' is modifying the virus' action of racing around, a comma is needed before deleting. Otherwise, it looks as if the world is doing the deletion. 
D. same problem as in C
E looks somewhat okay, even though the use of the infinitive 'to raid' is not a correct diction. Normally a noun is required to follow 'as well as' since it is a preposition. 
It is difficult to take OA as C, which stands upon mere structural pseudo parallelism.

sayantanc2k · Answer

Your query has already been answered by Daagh Sir and Abhishek. Though from parallelsim aspect, C is the best choice, ideally there should have been a comma before "deleting".

Closing this request.

AR15J · Answer

Thanks for your reply on this.

My main query on this --the virus raced around the world. The purpose to race around the world was to delete music files and image and to raid email addresses.

Even if I consider that there is comma before "deleting", Neither "deleting music files and images, as well as raiding email addresses" can be consequence of the previous phrase nor it is describing the previous phrase.

"As well as" is the issue in choice E as Daagh sir pointed out, but for meaning this choice makes more sense to me.

Please help !

sayantanc2k · Answer

Of course "deleting..." WAS the consequence of "racing". So present participle (with comma) would be definitely alright. If you used "to delete..", you would NOT know whether the virus actually could delete - you would just know that the virus raced to delete (purpose). So the meaning changes.

Ishamittal · Answer

We should look at the actions the virus did simultaneously, i.e., deleting music, raiding emails, etc. Parallelism will apply to these activities. These activities are a subset of "Raced around the world" and hence it will not be covered under parallelism.

sarthakkhurana01 · Answer

Despite choosing the correct answer, I have a doubt in the meaning, please explain:

infinitive is used for intent and verbing is used for consequence. Does the answer mean that the consequence of deleting and raiding had an intent to multiply....? This seems a bit awkward. Shouldn't it be intent throughout?

leiluh · Answer

A and B didnt make sense. I simply matched ing and ing.

When computer hackers released the “I Love You” virus in 2000, it race

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