, +ing and parallelism

[WendyH75]

Official Prep Question: Since digital recording offers essentially perfect reproduction—on compact discs, digital audiotapes, or digital videodiscs—audiophiles can accumulate vast collections of music, transferring them from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and not damaging the sound quality.
a. music, transferring them from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and not damaging
b. music, transferring it from one format to another, copying it, and digitally altering it with little effort and no damage to
c. music, transferring them from one format to another, copy them, and digitally alter them with little effort and no damage to
d. music and transfer it from one format to another, copy it, and then digitally altering it with little effort and not damaging
e. music and transfer it from one format to another, copying it, and digitally alter it with little effort and no damage to


In general, I personally find it hard to identify what the list of parallelism is when ",+ing " is involved in the sentence. When I first read this sentence I wasn't sure if it meant 1. Audiophiles CAN accumulate xxx, transfer xxx, copy xxx, and alter xxx OR 2. Audiophiles can ACCUMULATE xxx, transferring xxx, copying xxx and altering xxx ( +ing phrase modifies the previous action ACCUMULATE)

Are there tricks I can use in these type of situations where I can quickly elim or identify the correct structure/meaning

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Sorry for the delay in replying here. Please take a look at the forum guidelines before posting. I should check: which GMAT Prep exam is this problem taken from? Unfortunately we can only post problems from exams 1 and 2 on this forum due to copyright? Also, please post the answer to the problem when you post.

I share your frustration with identifying parallel lists. When we have "open markers" such as 'and', it's not always obvious where the list starts and which items are in it. Considering different interpretations and checking them for consistency takes some time and mental input. There may indeed be more than one possible interpretation to the sentence that seems to make sense.

For that reason, it's important to start with the easy things (a great principle to apply to all parts of the GMAT). This problem offers a pronoun issue and a second parallelism issue 'with little effort and not damaging' allow you to solve the problem without having to deal with the issue that you brought up.

That said, it's generally worth studying correct answer choices to see the way that GMAT sentences are constructed. Here, the relationship between the actions is that audiophiles don't simply accumulate and transfer music as two independent activities, but the transferring, copying, etc. are actions that explain how they manage to accumulate large collections of music. This is definitely a meaning issue, and a subtle one. From my experience, however, I think that it's too much of a nuance to be tested directly on a GMAT problem. Take a look at SC 733 from OG2019 for another example (again, the meaning interpretation isn't directly tested on this problem).