GMATPrep

[momo32]

D introduces a new independent clause (including a subject and verb), which is inappropriate without a comma in front of the "and"..

Dear Ron，

I remember that we cannot say A will play guitar ,and B will play guitar. We should say A will play guitar and B will play guitar.

But in this sentence, we introduce a new subject and verb.

Please correct me.

THX

[RonPurewal]

the gmat doesn't test the presence or absence of this comma, which is largely an issue of style (i.e., not a matter of right and wrong).
it's a distraction. ignore.

punctuation is relevant only when it objectively changes the structure of a sentence.
for instance, semicolons separate complete sentences, while commas don't. __ing modifiers that follow commas are fundamentally different from __ing modifiers that don't. etc.
even in these cases, though, the exam isn't testing the presence or absence of punctuation; instead, it's testing the larger issues of structure and/or meaning thereby created.

[NitinG177]

Hello Ron,
I would like to have your opinion on the following :-

1)The building took 500 men to complete it.
2)The building took 36 years to complete.
3)The building took 500 men 12 years to complete.

IF all the above 3 examples are correct, from them , can we deduce that when we mention only time frame in these sort of constructions, we do not need the pronoun at the end, while if we are only talking about human labor , then can we deduce that we need to include the pronoun at the end ( PS: i do now know of any specific rules about them and merely using the empirical knowledge i have about this language.)

Also , what do you think about the following analogy :
700,000 men took 36 years to complete the XXXX [although this now makes the "army.. " the object .. i am not really sure about this type of construction, whereby in one of the parallel element XXXX is subject and in the other parallel element it becomes the object .. However, i could not find any logical fallacy in such construction..]
Using this analogy, i could easily justify the omission of pronoun "IT" at the end .

[RonPurewal]

#1 is incorrect.

[nitinsinghpec]

Hi Ron,

I'm having a very silly doubt here , Isn't the two parallel sentence listed below has a tense issue ?

1. is more than .....
2. took 700 artisan ....
First one is in present tense
Second one is in past tense .

PS. Sorry in advance for such a question

Thanks in advance

Regards
Nitin Singh

[tim]

Nope, not a problem at all. First, notice that all five answer choices in the original post* use past tense, so we're stuck with it. There is NO rule about parallelism that says the verbs must be in the same tense. Conjugated verbs must match with conjugated verbs, but as long as that is satisfied the tenses don't matter at all. If you can get your hands on a 12th edition OG, take a look at problem 42 for another example.

*(Note that this problem is different from the version that appears in the OG, but that doesn't change the reality that parallelism doesn't require identical tenses.)

[nitinsinghpec]

Nope, not a problem at all. First, notice that all five answer choices in the original post* use past tense, so we're stuck with it. There is NO rule about parallelism that says the verbs must be in the same tense. Conjugated verbs must match with conjugated verbs, but as long as that is satisfied the tenses don't matter at all. If you can get your hands on a 12th edition OG, take a look at problem 42 for another example.

*(Note that this problem is different from the version that appears in the OG, but that doesn't change the reality that parallelism doesn't require identical tenses.)

Thanks Tim and Yes, now i can relate this kinds of parallelism with other questions as well. Great information.

[RonPurewal]

excellent. if you have any other questions go ahead and ask.

[tim]

BTW Ron pointed out to me that my example from OG12 actually involves modifiers rather than verbs, but I think it still serves to demonstrate the general idea that parallelism is really only concerned with matching parts of speech and not any finer details.