With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers. (A) the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve (B) the patience of its customers and its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives that try to relieve (C) its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try to relieve (D) its network and with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of initiatives to try relieving (E) its network and its customers’ patience strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try relieving https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/17/business/america-online-moves-to-placate-its-angry-users.html With its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, America Online announced a series of new initiatives yesterday to try to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated consumers. Customer (Im)Patience (A) Parallelism / Meaning ( X and Y ); Meaning ( trying ) (B) Parallelism / Meaning ( X and Y ); Meaning ( try ) (C) CORRECT (D) Parallelism / Meaning ( X and Y ); Meaning ( to try relieving ) (E) Meaning ( to try relieving ) First glance The sentence has only one word before the underline (with) and then splits between the patience and its network . The issue might have to do with Meaning, Sentence Structure, or some other issue that has to do with which noun to use after the word with . Issues (1) Parallelism / Meaning: X and Y The opening part of the sentence contains the parallel structure X and Y . With the patience of its customers is the X element and with its network strained to the breaking point is the Y element. Because the parallelism makes the two with prepositional phrases parallel, the part about strained to the breaking point appears to apply only to the Y element. If that is the case, though, then what does with the patience of its customers mean? The customers are actually patient? That doesn’t go along with the meaning of the rest of the sentence. Choice (D) reverses the order of network and customers but commits the same error: strained to the breaking point applies only to the patience of customers , not to the network . In choice (B), the parallelism is between its customers and its network , implying that the customers and the network have patience . The latter is illogical. Eliminate choices (A), (B), and (D) for faulty parallelism leading to an illogical meaning. (2) Meaning: trying; try; to try relieving The original sentence says that the company announced…initiatives trying to relieve the congestion . The initiatives were announced in order to try to relieve the congestion—the initiatives weren’t actually already in place at the moment that they were announced. Further, the initiatives themselves aren’t trying to do anything. The executives are perhaps trying to relieve the problem, but it’s illogical to say the initiatives are trying to do something. Eliminate choice (A) for faulty meaning. Check the end of the remaining answers. (B) company announced…initiatives that try to relieve the congestion (C) company announced…initiatives to try to relieve the congestion (D) company announced…initiatives to try relieving (E) company announced…initiatives to try relieving Answer (B) has a similar issue to answer (A). First, the present-tense try doesn’t match the meaning of the rest of the sentence, as the initiatives have not yet been launched. Second, the initiatives themselves are not trying to do something. Rather, the executives are introducing the initiatives in order to try to accomplish a certain goal. Eliminate choice (B) for faulty meaning. Answers (D) and (E) also convey an inappropriate meaning. You might decide to try hang-gliding on your next vacation, but you wouldn’t decide to try getting a good score on the GMAT. Rather, you would decide to try to get a good score. The latter scenario indicates intent: you do something in order to try to get to a certain result. In that scenario, use try + infinitive. Eliminate choices (D) and (E) for faulty meaning. The Correct Answer Correct answer (C) fixes the parallelism problem by pulling both X and Y elements into one prepositional phrase: With (its network AND the patience of its customers) strained to the breaking point . In this case, strained to the breaking point can apply to both elements. This choice also uses the language to try to relieve in order to indicate intent: the company is taking action in order to try to achieve a certain result.

Hello, qoksar . We are not looking at an infinitive form to do here, but rather at the subordinating conjunction in order to , and you can use that construct to follow up just about any action you want, whether the verb is announce , think , or whatever. Consider sentence (C) and the implied meaning of to : With its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers. This usage is perfectly acceptable, and it is not uncommon to see the subordinating conjunction in order to in its disguised to form. You may find this Cambridge Dictionary article on the topic useful. I hope that helps address your doubts. If you have further questions, feel free to ask. - Andrew

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18 Apr 2020, 04:00

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mdsaddamforgmat

thanks

I got another SC with the same confusion
https://gmatclub.com/forum/elizabeth-ba ... 36795.html

although this was much easier to eliminate based on the parallelism issue, wanted to know whether the use of 'expert' in front of 'authority' is also redundant here?

Yes, expert authority is considered redundant and is not one of those accepted or common expressions. Welcome to the confusing world of English grammar and semantics, where fat and slim can, in certain circumstances, be used to convey a similar idea (when talking about chance), up and down can paint the same picture (in the expressions hold up or slow down), and expressions such as out into can appear without any qualms. I am unaware of any comprehensive list of such expressions, but for each one you encounter, you can add it to your own list of do's or do not's.

Happy studies.

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I think it is unidiomatic to use "announce .... to do", so I did not choose C. In dictionary, announce is used as "announce that" or "announce sth to sb".

Is it because of "try" that we can use "announce ...to try to do"? Or is it okay to generally say "announce...to do sth"?

Thank you.

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qoksar

Hello, qoksar. We are not looking at an infinitive form to do here, but rather at the subordinating conjunction in order to, and you can use that construct to follow up just about any action you want, whether the verb is announce, think, or whatever. Consider sentence (C) and the implied meaning of to:

With its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives [in order] to try to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers.

This usage is perfectly acceptable, and it is not uncommon to see the subordinating conjunction in order to in its disguised to form. You may find this Cambridge Dictionary article on the topic useful.

I hope that helps address your doubts. If you have further questions, feel free to ask.

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1. In option A, With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point -- The modifier 'strained to the breaking point" applies to just "with its network" or both "With the patience of its customers" and "with its network" ?

First, let's notice that, read as if it were correctly written, that list uses "with" in two different ways.

"with the patience of its customers" would ordinarily mean something along the lines of "having the patience of its customers to make use of."

"with its network strained to the breaking point" means something along the lines of "having as an attribute its network being strained to the breaking point."

Anyway, regardless of whether the sentence makes sense, by using "with" twice, the list clearly separates the two items, because we have "with x and with y." The second "with" separates "x" from what follows the second "with." So, we don't have "with x and y strained to the breaking point." We have "with x and with y strained to the breaking point."

So, "strained to the breaking point" modifies only "network" in this version.

Using a preposition twice is actually a linguistic device that often has to be used to make clear how elements of a list are to be separated. In this case, the result of using "with" twice is an illogical separation of the elements.

Quote:

2. Since we have parallel marker "AND" in the prepositional phrase that starts with "WITH", so what is the level of parallelism we want in the 2 parts separated by the conjunction "AND" ? i.e. If the first part (preceding the parallel marker) has a prepositional phrase followed by a modifier, does the second part(following the parallel marker) SHOULD also have modifier ?
Or is it okay if both the parts that follow the preposition are nouns ?

'"Parallel" does NOT mean "exactly the same." Actually, it mostly means just "logical." So, of course, one element of a list could be composed of just a noun, while another is composed of a noun and a modifier.

Quote:

- Natalie studied ballet as a child, studies pilates now, and will study cooking someday.
** Verbs in parallel can belong to different tenses.
** But the parallel parts MUST make sense with the stem that precedes those parts.

- The angry politician, frustrated by the opposition's parliamentary tactics and screaming about the other parties unconstitutional behavior, is both a hypocrite and a narcissist. -- here both frustrated and screaming are modifiers that modify the politician, but we CANNOT replace screaming by "who screamed" because 'frustrated" will not be parallel to "who screamed".

The angry politician, who was frustrated by the opposition's parliamentary tactics and who screamed about the other parties unconstitutional behavior, is both a hypocrite and a narcissist.-- But this is correct because we have 2 who phrases in parallel ?

That sentence works.

Quote:

3. In option B, With the patience of its customers and its network strained to the breaking point --- here the With prepositional phrase "With the patience" will apply to both its customers and its network?
But since With the patience of its network DOES NOT make sense, we can read as With its network strained to the breaking point?

Interesting question, and the answer is that you can indeed use logic to determine how to read a sentence. In this case the sentence works, because, since a network would not have patience, there is no meaning ambiguity. If the second element of the list were one that could have patience, the sentence might have two possible meanings, and therefore, might not work.

GMATNinja
Hi, experts

I agree with your explanation. "With A and With B" sounds like the company has A and B, and this is not logical. I can successfully eliminate choice A and D base on meaning. I eliminate E because the sentence uses "try doing" and people say "try doing" is wrong in GMAT. With choice B, "its customers" and "its network" seem to be parallelled so I eliminated choice B.

My FISTS question is that in choice B, it says "new initiatives that try to relieve the congestion", is it logical to modify initiatives with "that try to" ? It sounds like the initiatives will try to relieve the congestion. My SECOND question is that is "try doing" incorrect? Can I eliminate choice E based on that?

Thanks in advance
Jack

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Good question! I wouldn't say that "try doing" is inherently wrong, but the phrase seems to have a slightly different meaning than "try to do."

For example: "Tim tried cooking pasta for his family," makes it sounds as though Tim actually cooked the pasta. But the phrase "Tim tried to cook pasta for his family" kind of makes it sound as though the cooking were aspirational: Tim made an attempt to cook, but the action wasn't necessarily completed.

In this SC question, I suppose you could make the case that because the company has merely announced the initiatives, it hasn't enacted them, and so the aspirational form of "to try to relieve" is better than "to try relieving," but that feels like an awfully subtle distinction, so I'd prefer a more concrete issue to eliminate (E).

In (E), we get the phrase, "With its network and its customers’ patience strained to the breaking point." The first time I read that, because "its network" and "its customers'" both precede "patience," I interpreted it to mean that we were talking about both the network's patience and the customer's patience. That doesn't make any sense. If you read it again, yeah, you can figure out that it's just the customer's patience and the network itself that are strained (after all, we have "network", not "network's"), but it takes some work to get there, and it's initially confusing.

Contrast that option with the opening phrase in (C) "With its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point." Now, because "patience" comes before "its customers," it's crystal clear that we're talking about two separate entities: 1) the network itself and 2) the patience of the customers.

So while there's no concrete rule to rely on here, (C) is a clearer, more logical construction than (E), and therefore better.

I hope that helps!

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23 Aug 2020, 09:28

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GMATNinja and other experts, please help me understand:
in option A and option D, can we consider "strained to the breaking point" as part of common stem for items:

"With the patience of its customers and with its network" in option A, and

:With its network and with the patience of its customers" in option D.

Thanks in advance.

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ShubhamAgarwal

ShubhamAgarwal
Indeed, what you are saying is the intent here meaning-wise.

Here's the question -
With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers.

The options A and D would look like this.

(A) With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve ...

(D) With its network and with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of initiatives to try relieving ...

What you are saying in not possible because of the structure of sentence in both A and D. Only if you incorrectly think/believe so, then you can do so.
Note that prepositions, conjunctions and commas etc. are signals that guide the sentence - they are like pills that swings the mood of the sentence

.

'With' and 'and' separate the two parts - 'the patience ... customers' and 'its network' in A. Thus 'strained.. point' can only modify 'its network' in A and 'the patience ... customers' in D.

Your question has been neatly explained by GMATNinja and MartyTargetTestPrep on page 2.

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To try to relieve is ok in option C?

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Anshu0012

To try to relieve is ok in option C?

Hi Anshu0012,

It's okay. Do you have a specific question about to try to relieve?

For example, let's say that we want to attach the idea of an "attempt" to something like to avoid a recession. We can do that with to try to avoid a recession.

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Hi everyone and hi mikemcgarry ,

I don't understand why these 2 elements are considered parallel:

with its X and the patience of its Y

In order to have a parallelism I don't need something like this: with its X and its Y ???

Thank you very much for your help

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Anshu0012

To try to relieve is ok in option C?

Yes, “to try to relieve” works! To see why, let's compare (1) "try + infinitive" (“try to relieve”) and (2) "try + gerund" (“try relieving”).

(But first, a disclaimer: idioms are rarely worth this much time and energy, as explained in this article, so don't lose any sleep if the following doesn't make much sense to you. If you see an idiom split and you’re not 100% sure what the right idiom is, look for other stuff.)

Generally speaking, there is a subtle meaning difference between “try doing” and “try to do”:

With “try doing,” the focus is typically on the results of a task. The task itself might be easy, but we just don’t know what the results will be. For example: “The soup is bland. Maybe I should try adding some salt.” Here the addition of salt might help the soup get better. The question here is NOT whether we can add the salt -- that part is easy. The question is whether adding the salt will actually help.

With “try to,” the focus is typically on attempting a task. This usually implies that the task itself is difficult. For example: “I’m going to try to swim the English Channel.” So, unlike the salt example, here the question is whether the task itself can actually be completed. (Swimming across the English Channel seems kinda hard.)

Back to the question. The company is NOT sure whether it will be able to relieve the congestion -- the act of relieving isn't some easy task like adding salt. As in the second example above, the question is whether the task itself (in this case, the act of relieving) can actually be completed. So, "try to relieve" is actually a better fit in this case (again, this is very subtle!).

If you're wondering why “to try” is better than "trying" (which we have in option (A)), check out this post.

I hope that helps!

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gmatxsurf

Let's start by checking out the modifiers:

"its network" - Notice that "its" is just a modifier that describes "network."
"the patience of its customers" - Here, "of its customers" is a modifier that describes "patience."

If the sentence had been, "With the network and the patience strained...", you'd have no problem accepting the parallelism: (1) with [noun 1] and (2) [noun 2].

The structure in choice (C) is essentially the same, only we've added a few modifiers to describe the nouns in our list. But these modifiers don't really affect the parallelism--at its core, this is a parallel list of nouns: "With (1) [its] network and (2) the patience of its customers strained...".

So, when analyzing parallelism, it's often helpful to ignore the extra little modifiers and to think about what's actually at the heart of the list.

I hope that helps!

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I see some folks have said "customers' patience" in (E) is awkward, but couldn't you counter-way this by saying its more elegant to use "its" before "network" and "customers' patience"? (I realize the answer is C, but I don't think how to tease out the differences between especially C and E have been clearly spelled out yet). Thanks!

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Hi Experts,
Could you please explain why the modifier "strained to the breaking point" in the right choice doesn't relate to the closest noun "customers"? Do we have a rule which allows such modifier to "jump over" the closest noun?
Thank you,
Evgenia

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evgeniailyina2018

Hi evgeniailyina2018,

Have you come across any "rule" that says that a modifier cannot modify anything other than the element closest to it? Such a rule cannot be correct, because there will always be situations in language where ambiguity is possible. In this case, the reader is expected to understand that with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point should be interpreted as:

1. with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point
and not
2. with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point

(2) would clearly not make sense in this context. If we're okay with that, we shouldn't feel compelled to apply any "rule" that tells us what strained to the breaking point refers to (again, because there is no such rule). In another situation, we could end up going the other way:

3. with the cooperation of the agencies involved in the discussions

We can expect that the reader will not assume that the cooperation is what is involved in the discussions.

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I don't think how to tease out the differences between especially C and E have been clearly spelled out yet).

Generally:
VERBing = an action that is actually happening
to + VERB = an action that is intended but is NOT actually happening

When his computer malfunctioned, John tried pushing the power button.
Here, the action in blue is actually happening: the power button is pressed downward.
When his computer malfunctioned, John tried to push the power button.
Here, the action in blue is intended but is NOT actually happening: despite John's efforts, the power button is NOT pressed downward, perhaps because it is stuck.

initiative = a strategy intended to resolve a problem
E: a series of new initiatives to try relieving the congestion
Here:
The blue portion refers to strategies INTENDED to resolve a problem.
The red VERBing implies solutions that are ALREADY HAPPENING and are already RELIEVING the congestion.
Since the two meanings contradict each other, eliminate E.

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Updated on: 18 May 2021, 22:41

Originally posted by Jayantm07 on 18 May 2021, 00:48.
Last edited by Jayantm07 on 18 May 2021, 22:41, edited 1 time in total.

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After reading all the explanations, i still could not eliminate C and E.

Most of the replies have addressed C being a better option than E, so chose C.

I chose E but there is a clear error in E.

After reading closely the first part of the sentence, the split IMO is this:

(C) its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try to relieve

(E) its network and its customers’ patience strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try relieving

Option C correctly signifies the patience of the customers. Replacing its with company, it sounds - With the company's network strained and the patience of the company's customers strained. Makes sense.
Option E if i rewrite the possessive as its patience of customers - It does not make sense. Replacing its with company, it sounds- With the company's network strained and the company's customers' patience strained or in that case the company's patience of customers strained which i guess is weird.

Inspired by GMATNinja to replace the pronoun.

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GMAT Focus 1: 715 Q83 V90 DI83 Verified score

GMAT 1: 780 Q50 V51 Verified score

GRE 1: Q170 V169 Verified score

Posts: 5,949

Kudos: 5,080

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18 May 2021, 21:48

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Hi Jayantm07,

It may be a little weird, but we shouldn't consider its customers’ patience impossible. That said, the patience of its customers is definitely better than its customers’ patience.

amoljain

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23 Jul 2021, 23:48

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AbdurRakib

With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers.

(A) the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives trying to relieve

(B) the patience of its customers and its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives that try to relieve

(C) its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try to relieve

(D) its network and with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of initiatives to try relieving

(E) its network and its customers’ patience strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced a series of new initiatives to try relieving

Can someone please explain how, in Option C, 'with its network' and 'the patience of its customer' are parallel to each other? Furthermore, if we see logically, the modifying phrase "With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point" is modifying the 'on-line service company'. So the parallel list should make sense with 'on-line service company'.

The first item of the list makes sense. On-line service company, with its network strained to the breaking point, announced...

However, I am having a hard time accepting the second part, On-line service company, the patience of its customers starined to the breaking point, announced.... This sentence structure does not make sense to me.

I would request any expert to show some light on this, please. I am really struggling on this one.

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01 Aug 2021, 21:31

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Why is "to try to relieve" is idiomatic and "to try relieving" is not?

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