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AndrewN
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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend 01 Jul 2021, 10:14
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Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!

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25% (medium)

Question Stats:

68% (01:07) correct 32% (01:33) wrong based on 153 sessions

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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it onto the November ballot.

(A) With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it
(B) The signatures of the supporters around 10,000 in number, the petition to amend the city's bylaws was
(C) With the signatures around 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it
(D) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, which had signatures around 10,000 supporters, made it
(E) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, having gained the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, was

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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend 01 Jul 2021, 11:07
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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it onto the November ballot.

(A) With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it - Correct answer . "with the signatures....." modifies "the petition"
(B) The signatures of the supporters around 10,000 in number, the petition to amend the city's bylaws was - awkward sentence structure
(C) With the signatures around 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it - Signatures were not around supporters
(D) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, which had signatures around 10,000 supporters, made it - pronoun error. which has bylaws as its antecedent .
(E) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, having gained the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, was - the sentence does not make sense "the petition was onto the november ballot"
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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend 01 Jul 2021, 23:37
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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it onto the November ballot.

(A) With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it Correct

(B) The signatures of the supporters around 10,000 in number, the petition to amend the city's bylaws was Incorrect

with require in modifier, so the modifier perfectly modifies the petition

(C) With the signatures around 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it Incorrect

of require after signatures - the signatures of supporters

(D) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, which had signatures around 10,000 supporters, made it Incorrect

bylaws had signatures - changes intended meaning

(E) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, having gained the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, was Incorrect

having uses redundant, only gained can be modified The petition
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With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend 04 Jul 2021, 08:18
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Hello, everyone. I created this question more or less to illustrate how to create a question post. I wanted to post the OE sooner, but I found myself busy with several GMAT™-related projects yesterday, so here we go. For those of you who picked (A), well done; for the rest, keep reading...

AndrewN
With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it onto the November ballot.

(A) With the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it
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There is a pernicious rumor that the with prepositional phrase is a dubious construct on the GMAT™, and that just is not true. Sure, you will see it misused in several incorrect answer choices if you comb through enough questions, but there is nothing inherently wrong with this construct. In this case, we see that it properly modifies the subject of the main clause, the petition. About the only questionable element within the original sentence is the casual made it as part of the expression made it onto [something]. Of course, it is not used as a pronoun, so we should not be looking for its referent; rather, it is used as a placeholder. In any case, I would not get trigger-happy and eliminate this answer choice based on a single questionable element. Look for easier targets first.

Quote:
(B) The signatures of the supporters around 10,000 in number, the petition to amend the city's bylaws was
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Believe it or not, the opening phrase is fine as a noun modifier—the signatures are understood to be on the subsequently mentioned petition, even if the ahead of supporters could be swapped out for its to add a little extra clarity. However, in number is an unnecessary qualifier when we already have an actual number to work with—10,000—so there is no need for the extra words. If you missed these subtleties, that is okay, but you should notice the more obvious problem with the tail-end of the underlined portion. Simply put, you cannot say that the petition was onto the ballot. You can say that it was placed on the ballot (or something similar), but was onto will not do. This should be our first elimination.

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(C) With the signatures around 10,000 supporters, the petition to amend the city's bylaws made it
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Now we are missing a preposition, of. Without it, the opening phrase seems to conflate signatures with supporters, and the two are not the same. If you adopt a meaning-based approach to SC questions, this ought to be an easy elimination.

Quote:
(D) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, which had signatures around 10,000 supporters, made it
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I am drawing attention to the which instead of marking it as wrong outright. Why? Because a which clause need not necessarily "touch" the noun it modifies. Could bylaws have 10,000 signatures? Perhaps, and that is a legitimate concern. But consider that if the relative clause were to modify the petition, it would be harder to place any closer without creating an equally offensive sentence:

The petition, which had signatures around 10,000 supporters, to amend the city's bylaws...

I would caution against rule-based thinking without critical reasoning. If the word bylaws were replaced with a noun on which signatures might not reasonably be placed, the sentence structure in (D) would be fine. That said, we encounter the same problem as we did in (C) with signatures and supporters appearing to be the same thing. (Always look for an easy out if you can spot one.)

Quote:
(E) The petition to amend the city's bylaws, having gained the signatures of some 10,000 supporters, was
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Only was derails this answer choice, the same was we saw in (B). Yes, there might be a better way of expressing having gained the signatures, but the participial phrase works to modify the petition, something that could have gotten a certain number of signatures through circulation.

I hope you enjoyed this question. If you have further questions about any of the answer choices, feel free to ask. And as always, good luck with your studies.

- Andrew
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