With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to

(B) with 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

''strained'' is an ed verbal so should it just modify the closest noun 'network' ?

How do I pin point the difference of intended meaning b/w B] and C]. Please highlight how should I see this sentence

(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

Is ' to try relieving' a wrong grammatical construction. How to spot that?

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

By default, you should include the whole compound noun ("X and Y"). Here, that's "the patience of its customers and its network".

If the modifier is only intended to modify the second of the two nouns, then there are ways to restructure the sentence to make that intention clear and unambiguous.
Depending on the exact context, one of the following could accomplish this goal:
with X and with Y __ed...
or
with Y __ed... and X...


(C) 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

how is the usage of ed verbal different from option B]

How do I pin point the difference of intended meaning b/w B] and C]. Please highlight how should I see this sentence

(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

Is ' to try relieving' a wrong grammatical construction. How to spot that?

(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

Hello Everyone!


(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

This option is INCORRECT for a couple reasons. First, it's not necessary to use the apostrophe in "customers'" because it's not being followed by a plural word (for example "customers' chairs" would be okay). It also uses the incorrect "to try relieving" which conveys the wrong meaning.

There you have it - option C is the correct answer!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

Hi Experts, It seems that we should care the highlighted part very carefully. Does it really matter?
if Mr X has just 1 book, can't we write Mr X's book? Is it necessary the book to be plural?


fyi, it seems that ''EMPOWERgmatVerbal'' is not available in the forum for long days. Can you clarify it, please?

Hi Experts,
May I know the difference between the following versions?

1. With its network and the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point...
2. With its network and with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point...

Does strained modify both 'network' and 'customers' in both versions?

Hey TheUltimateWinner

Happy to step in.

I'm not aware of this rule. It would be nice if EMPOWERgmatVerbal gave more clarification about that. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with "customers' patience" from a strictly grammatical standpoint. Of course, it would be more appropriate to say "the patience of its customers" because this is more rhetorical. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that "customers' patience" is wrong.

The boy's hostel = a hostel where a particular boy stays
The boys' hostel = a particular hostel for boys

I hope this helps.

Best,

Abhishek

Hey TheUltimateWinner

Happy to help.

"Strained" modifies both "network" and "patience" (not customers) in sentence 1. However, in sentence 2, "strained" modifies only "patience". This is because sentence 2 adopts the structure:

With A and with B, Main clause.

So, B and A are distinct units. This is why the influence of 'strained' will not extend all the way to 'network'.


I hope this helps.

Best,

Abhishek

mikemcgarry avigutman @agmatninja egmat what is the issue with customers' patience vs patience of customers? I see empower gmat's explanation is not explained in the best way for this and reading through the forum there is not much i could find. Pls elaborate and how shold we go about picking this difference for other similar questions

what is the issue with customers' patience vs patience of customers? I see empower gmat's explanation is not explained in the best way for this and reading through the forum there is not much i could find. Pls elaborate and how shold we go about picking this difference for other similar questions

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.

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

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:
Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended meaning of this sentence is that the on-line service company's network and the patience of its customers were strained to the breaking point, and it announced a series of new initiatives for the purpose of trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers.

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Parallelism

• Any elements linked by a conjunction (“and” in this sentence) must be parallel.

A: This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase “trying to relieve”; the construction of this phrase illogically implies that the company announced a series of new initiatives that were trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers; the intended meaning is that the company announced a series of new initiatives for the purpose of trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers. Further, Option A fails to maintain parallelism between “the patience of its customers” and “with its network”; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction (“and” in this sentence) must be parallel.

B: Trap. This answer choice alters the meaning of this sentence through the phrase “the patience of its customers and its network”; the construction of this phrase illogically implies that the patience of both the company’s customers and that of its network were strained to the breaking point; the intended meaning is that both the company’s network and the patience of the company's customers were strained to the breaking point. Moreover, Option B further alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase “that try to relieve”; the construction of this phrase illogically implies that the company announced a series of new initiatives that were trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers; the intended meaning is that the company announced a series of new initiatives for the purpose of trying to relieve the congestion that has led to at least four class-action lawsuits and thousands of complaints from frustrated customers.

C: Correct. This answer choice uses the phrase “its network and the patience of its customers”, conveying the intended meaning – that both the company’s network and the patience of the company's customers were strained to the breaking point. Moreover, Option C uses the phrase “to try to relieve”, conveying the intended meaning – that the company announced a series of new initiatives for the purpose of trying to relieve the congestion, but it is not certain whether it succeeded. Further, Option C correctly maintains parallelism between “its network” and “the patience of its customers”.

D: This answer choice alters the meaning of this sentence through the phrase “to try relieving”; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that it is certain that the company is able to relieve the congestion, but is not certain what result doing so will produce; the intended meaning is that the company attempted to relieve the congestion, but it is not certain whether it succeeded. Further, Option D fails to maintain parallelism between “its network” and “with the patience of its customers”; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction (“and” in this sentence) must be parallel.

E: This answer choice alters the meaning of this sentence through the phrase “to try relieving”; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that it is certain that the company is able to relieve the congestion, but is not certain what result doing so will produce; the intended meaning is that the company attempted to relieve the congestion, but it is not certain whether it succeeded.

Hence, C is the best answer choice.

Great question! This is an excellent illustration of why the OG explanations have to be taken with a grain of salt. I agree with you - because "trying to relieve" comes after "new initiatives", (A) seems to communicate that the initiatives are attempting to relieve congestion, when it seems more logical to write that the company is trying to do so. In other words, the problem with the modifier isn't really that it's ambiguous -- the problem is that it creates an illogical meaning.

However, there's a more concrete problem with (A). Take another look:

"With the patience of its customers and with its network strained to the breaking point, the on-line service company announced..."

If I write, "With X and with Y," I'm referring to two independent phenomena. Now it sounds as though the online company made the announcement with 1) the patience of its customers, and it also made the announcement with 2) the network strained to the breaking point. So the network got together with the patience of its customers and made an announcement? That doesn't make any sense.

Instead, we want to communicate that the patience of the customers and the network are both strained to the breaking point. Because that opening modifier fails to do this, it's illogical, and we can toss (A) without worrying about the placement of "trying to relieve."

I hope that helps!

Hi GMATNinja,

In A, if we take AND as a parallelism trigger, and see that network (noun) is parallel with patience (noun), we can apply both these nouns to ''strained to the breaking point''. We can say, with the patience of its customers strained to the breaking point and with its network strained to the breaking point, the company announced..

Why can't we do this?

Hi,

GMATNinja, can you please explain the answer to this question? How do I eliminate all choices but one?

I am not able to understand despite reading other explanations. There are so many rules mentioned for each of the options and I am not sure if these rules are universally valid across all other GMAT questions.