Bunuel wrote:
With their fields cracked and barren one moment, muddy and soggy the next, farmers in Iowa face a familiar fear — that their crops will not make it.A. With their fields cracked and barren one moment, muddy and soggy the next, farmers in Iowa face a familiar fear — that their crops will not make it.
B. With their fields cracked and barren one moment, and they are muddy and soggy the next, farmers in Iowa face a familiar fear that their crops will not make it.
C. Their fields cracked and barren one moment, with them muddy and soggy the next, farmers in Iowa face a familiar fear: their crops will not make it.
D. Farmers in Iowa, with their fields cracked and barren one moment, with them muddy and soggy the next, face a familiar fear — that their crops will not make it.
E. Farmers in Iowa have their fields cracked and barren one moment, muddy and soggy the next, and they face a familiar fear — that their crops will not make it.
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
The correct answer (A) in this very difficult sentence correction problem contains an unusual rhetorical structure called asyndeton, in which a conjunction is omitted between successive phrases.
(A) is equivalent to (but even better than) this sentence: With their fields cracked and barren one moment and muddy and soggy the next, farmers in Iowa face a familiar fear — that their crops will not make it. Of course you don’t need to know what asyndeton is to get this right! You just need to realize that you have read many sentences like this throughout your life and that the other four are all wrong.
In (B), by inserting the independent clause “and they are muddy and soggy the next” between the modifier and the noun “farmers”, the sentence is structurally incorrect and there is nothing for the modifier to modify.
In (C) “with them muddy and soggy the next” is not parallel to the structure starting the sentence and cannot be inserted after starting with “Their fields…” The “with” needs to be at the beginning not in the middle of the two phrases. Also, it seems like the “them” is referring to the farmers and not the fields.
In (D), the second “with” is unnecessary and redundant. It is one thought: with the fields cracked and barren one moment and muddy and soggy the next. The same problem with “them” exists in (D).
For (E), it is incorrect to say that “they are having their fields cracked and barren” There is no perpetrator of that action in the sentence and it is thus nonsensical.
Answer is (A).