as/than

[ashish.jere]

A study published in the British Medical Journal showed that woman who ate nuts more than five times a week were about one third less likely to suffer from coronary heart diseases as those who ate no nuts at all.

A. as those who ate

B. as women who ate

C. as those eating

D. than women eating

E. than were those who ate

[RonPurewal]

A study published in the British Medical Journal showed that woman who ate nuts more than five times a week were about one third less likely to suffer from coronary heart diseases as those who ate no nuts at all.

A. as those who ate

B. as woman who ate

C. as those eating

D. than woman eating

E. than were those who ate

first of all, i think you're confusing "woman" (singular) with "women" (plural). please be VERY careful with transcription, thanks.

* "one third less..." must be paired with "than", not "as". (this is the case with "more" and "less" in general: they can't go with "as".)
this consideration knocks out everything except (d) and (e)..

* you need the second part to be parallel to women who ate nuts more than five times a week. (i'm assuming that you transcribed "women" incorrectly, since you wrote "woman" which makes no sense here)
this means that the PARALLEL construction must be PLURAL - either "women" again, or "those" to represent women - and that it must use the PAST tense in order to make a legitimate comparison with the other half (which is also in the past tense).
only (e) does this.

ans (e)

[ashish.jere]

question edited. thanks.

A study published in the British Medical Journal showed that woman who ate nuts more than five times a week were about one third less likely to suffer from coronary heart diseases as those who ate no nuts at all.

A. as those who ate

B. as woman who ate

C. as those eating

D. than woman eating

E. than were those who ate

first of all, i think you're confusing "woman" (singular) with "women" (plural). please be VERY careful with transcription, thanks.

* "one third less..." must be paired with "than", not "as". (this is the case with "more" and "less" in general: they can't go with "as".)
this consideration knocks out everything except (d) and (e)..

* you need the second part to be parallel to women who ate nuts more than five times a week. (i'm assuming that you transcribed "women" incorrectly, since you wrote "woman" which makes no sense here)
this means that the PARALLEL construction must be PLURAL - either "women" again, or "those" to represent women - and that it must use the PAST tense in order to make a legitimate comparison with the other half (which is also in the past tense).
only (e) does this.

ans (e)

[RonPurewal]

no problem.

[thanghnvn]

Ron, pls, help.

D is concise and clear and not ambiguous and we do not need paralelism here. So, D is correct.

pls, look at thid thread, also from this forum

comparision-and-verb-t8288.html

why we need paralelism. It is clear already. Or, even if the sentence is clear, we still prefer parallelism.

HELP.PLS.

[RonPurewal]

Ron, pls, help.

D is concise and clear and not ambiguous and we do not need paralelism here. So, D is correct.

(d) is inferior to (e).
look at the structures:
(d): women who ate... vs. women eating...
(e): women who ate... vs. those who ate...

(e) is clearly better.

i don't think i understand what you mean by "we don't need parallelism here". when you have parallel contexts, parallel structures are ALWAYS preferred to non-parallel structures -- that's the whole point.
in (d), the structures are not parallel; therefore (d) is wrong. in (e), on the other hand, the structures are parallel.

why we need paralelism. It is clear already. Or, even if the sentence is clear, we still prefer parallelism.

again, i'm not sure i understand what you're asking.

if the question you're asking is "do we always prefer parallelism to non-parallelism?" then the answer is, clearly, yes.