Question: City Officials Leaving Office

Comment on City Officials Leaving Office

Assuming there was an option F: have chosen to leave office rather than meeting
Would this be right too?
gmat-admin's picture

Not quite.
The officials' options were TO LEAVE or TO MEET.
So, to maintain parallelism, we can say "have chosen to leave office rather than to meet" or we can drop the second "to" and just say "have chosen to leave office rather than meet"

Hi Brent,
What if we had an option "have chosen LEAVING office rather than MEETING". Will this be a justified answer?
gmat-admin's picture

I don't believe so. The idiom is "have chosen to X"

Hey Brent,
I love the fact that in your videos you also mention points that we shouldn't eliminate on the basis of, such as the instead of vs rather than. Such small points really help cause I often find myself making 2-3 splits on the basis of incorrect identifiers.

Is the use of "have" also appropriate because it comes after plural "city officials" ? Besides it sounding better to the ear, that is why I eliminated the choices with "had"
gmat-admin's picture

We need the plural HAVE so that it agrees with the plural OFFICIALS.

Also, we can eliminate the past perfect HAD CHOSEN because this tense is used for an action that was completed in the past BEFORE another action in the past. Since the "choosing" did not occur before some other past action, we can eliminate HAD CHOSEN.

Cheers,
Brent

Hey Brent,

https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-absence-from-business-and-financial-records-of-the-nineteenth-cent-220383.html

This question is from the 650-800 OG prac questions list. I thought that in "statistics on women from business AND financial records of the nineteenth century" AND makes plural so it should be "leave us" and not "leaves us" but the OA is E. I am still unable to figure out why. Kindly help. Thanks!
gmat-admin's picture

Link: https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-absence-from-business-and-financial-recor...

Great question, aashaybaindur.

The key to determining whether we have SUBJECT-VERB agreement, is correctly identifying the SUBJECT.

I suggest that you begin by locating the VERB.

Original sentence: The absence from business and financial records of the nineteenth century of statistics about women LEAVE us with no record of the jobs that were performed by women and how they survived economically.

The verb is LEAVE.

Now ask, "Who/what is doing the LEAVING?"

Is it the records that are doing the leaving?
No. In fact that aren't any record to do that.
It's the ABSENCE of records that are leaving.
So, the subject here is ABSENCE.

Since ABSENCE is singular, we need the singular verb LEAVES

We get: The ABSENCE (of records) LEAVES us with....

Does that help?

Cheers,
Brent

Hi Brent,

I have a doubt in option C, why it is not "...to leave office rather than TO meet" ? Could you please explain why "to" is not used before meet?
gmat-admin's picture

TO LEAVE and TO MEET are both called "infinitives," and we can treat the parallelism issue in one of two ways.

For example, both of the following options are correct:
- Joe likes to run and to jump.
- Joe likes to run and jump.

For more on this, watch the first 3 minutes of this video: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-sentence-correction/video/1171

Cheers,
Brent

Hi Brent,

In the example (taken from question number 67 of this module), Teachers are required not only TO TEACH academic skills, but also TO IMPACT socially-accepted values, both 'to teach' and 'to impact' are infinitives. Going by the logic as explained in the above comment, will it be safe to remove 'to' from 'to impact'?
If we cannot, please explain why?

Thanks in advance!
gmat-admin's picture

When it comes to situations in which the infinitives are situated close to each other and are separated by AND or OR, we have the option of keeping TO or eliminating TO.

For example, we can write "Joe goes camping TO relax and TO play" or we can write "Joe goes camping to relax and play"

When it comes to CORRELATIVES (e.g., NOT ONLY X....BUT ALSO Y), we need parallelism.

Hi Brent,

In my understanding "Officials left office" should be the completed event
that why I decided to choose "Had chosen" rather than "Have chosen".
Can you elaborate on this point?
gmat-admin's picture

In order to use the past perfect HAD CHOSEN, the "choosing" must have occurred BEFORE some other completed past event.

Since the sentence doesn't mention any other past events, we cannot use HAD CHOSEN.

For more on the past perfect tense, watch: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-sentence-correction/video/1178

Isn't "have chosen" in the present perfect tense?
gmat-admin's picture

Oops!
You're absolutely right. I'm not sure why I called it the past progressive tense (at 1:40).
Thanks for the heads up!

In option E, "are having to choose" makes it sound like the officials are being forced to leave without an option to implement drastic measures. This changes the meaning right (instead of they opting for it)? Or could there be a case wherein in light of economic challenges, implementing measures has become difficult and hence they are left with no choice. In the latter, we wouldn't eliminate this option solely based on meaning?
gmat-admin's picture

Great point, Harshbir.
"Having to choose" does change the meaning of the sentence.
One of the nice things about GMAT Sentence Correction questions is that incorrect answers often have more than one problem that makes them incorrect.

Hi Brent, Please can you help out with the question below.

Outlining his strategy for nursing the troubled conglomerate back to health, the chief executive's plans were announced on Wednesday for cutting the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months.

(A) executive's plans were announced on Wednesday for cutting the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12billion in assets over the next 18 months

(B) executive's plans, which are to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months were announced on Wednesday

(C) executive's plans for cutting the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12 billion in assets over the next 18 months were announced on Wednesday

(D) executive announced plans Wednesday to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12billion in assets over the next 18 months

(E) executive announced plans Wednesday that are to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12billion in assets over the next 18 months
gmat-admin's picture

The sentence begins with the modifying phrase "Outlining his strategy for nursing the troubled conglomerate back to health"
So we'll stop at the comma and ask, "WHO is outlining his strategy?"
Reading on we get...

(A/B/C) the executive's plans...
The PLANS we're outlining a strategy? No good.
Eliminate A, B and C
For more on the above strategy, watch https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat-sentence-correction/video/1163

(E) executive announced plans Wednesday that are to cut the company's huge debt by selling nearly $12billion in assets over the next 18 months
The idiom is to ANNOUNCE PLANS TO X
Eliminate E.

Answer: D

Hey Brent,
I have watched all the videos related to sentence correction and still found it very difficult to answer the sentence correction questions. Do you have any suggestions for me, to improve my verbal section knowledge.
gmat-admin's picture

The difficulty with learning sentence correction (SC) is that students learn dozens of INDIVIDUAL rules a grammar, but most SC questions test a variety of rules (e.g., subject-verb agreement, verb tense, pronoun references, etc.) in one question. So, it takes a while to get used to looking for such a wide variety of potential errors.

I suggest you start by answering the easiest SC questions. For each question you answer incorrectly, be sure to read experts' solutions to better understand what you missed.

In time, you'll be able to quickly identify common errors.

I hope that helps.

I got this right, but I didn't think about parallel, instead just feeling "ing" caused redundancy and not necessarily needed.

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