While the Eastern Whip-poor-will – a nocturnal bird that feeds mostly in the very early morning – and the Common Nighthawk – a nocturnal bird from the same family that, despite its name, feeds mostly during the morning and evening– appear equal in size to each other when sitting on a branch or in a nest, in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger due to its greater wingspan. A. appear equal in size to each other when sitting on a branch or in a nest, in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger due to its greater wingspan. B. appear equal in size to one another when sitting on a branch or in a nest, in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger due to its greater wingspan. C. appear equal in size when sitting on a branch or in a nest; in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger because of its greater wingspan. D. appear equal in size to each other when they are sitting on a branch or in a nest, in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger because of its greater wingspan E. appear equal in size when they are seen on a branch or in a nest, in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger because of its greater wingspan.

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While the Eastern Whip-poor-will a nocturnal bird that feeds

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AG95

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22 May 2021, 19:56

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Hi VeritasKarishma / GMATNinja , Can you please explain what 'They' is referring to in option D/E. I didn't mark these two options because of use of they.

VeritasKarishma

PiyushK

Although E conveys best meaning, E is not 100% correct. A prepositional phrase is placed between two clauses and such construction is technically ambiguous. phrase is eligible to modify any clause.

Subordinate clause, prepositional phrase, main clause.

While is a subordinate conjunction connecting a subordinate clause with the main clause.

While Sub Clause, Main Clause.

While the Eastern and the Common appear equal in size when they are seen on a branch or in a nest, in the air, the Common Nighthawk appears much larger because of its greater wingspan.

For more on conjunctions, check:
https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html#/2014/06 ... -the-gmat/

KarishmaB

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AG95

Hi VeritasKarishma / GMATNinja , Can you please explain what 'They' is referring to in option D/E. I didn't mark these two options because of use of they.

VeritasKarishma

PiyushK

Use of 'they' is fine. Remove non essential modifiers and replace complicated names with variables to understand the structure of the sentence. The sentence boils down to:

While A and B appear equal in size when they are ... (here, 'they' refers to A and B)
Correct.

"appear equal in size to each other" has redundancy. When we say "They are equal in size," we don't need to add "to each other". It's redundant. When "they are equal," it means they are equal to each other. So (D) is not correct.

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IanStewart, I would love to hear your take on this question.

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kntombat

IanStewart, I would love to hear your take on this question.

I'm not sure I have anything interesting to say about it

We say "x and y are equal", and there's no reason to say "x and y are equal to each other", so that alone makes C or E better than the other choices. But the other choices also suggest a second meaning that isn't intended: "the two birds appear to each other that they are equal in size". The sentence is presumably describing how the birds look to people, and not how the birds look to each other.

I don't see any major issues with either C or E, except for that semicolon in C, which is clearly wrong (though easy to miss on a quick read). I don't think I've seen the actual GMAT ever take a perfectly good answer choice in SC, and turn it into a wrong answer just by replacing a comma with a semicolon -- that seems more a test of eyesight than of anything else. I think there's one superfluous comma in answer E, but it's not really wrong, just something I'd delete if I was editing it.

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Due to is used to modify noun and because of is used to modify verb. Here, for this case , it should use because of.
to make the sentence simple without too much modifiers, it can be clear on the correct choice on E

While the WP and the CN appear equal in size to each other when sitting on a branch , the CN appears much larger because of its greater wingspan.

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