forum rules, sir.
the THREAD TITLE must be composed of the FIRST SEVERAL WORDS OF THE PROBLEM ITSELF.
i've changed this for you on this thread. please do this correctly from now on.
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kramacha1979 Wrote:Isn't B more concise than D ?
(b) contains "sufficient enough".
wrong. instant kill.
if you see other such instances of redundancy, such as "continue onward", "reply back", "added bonus", etc., then these should be instantly destroyed as well.
another problem with (b) is that it's ambiguous. we don't know whether the "with" phrase describes the
preceding or
following thing.
i'll illustrate with some colors:
Unlike the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, with sufficient enough power in fuel cells and batteries for their short flights,
a permanently orbiting space station will have to generate its own electricity.
Unlike the shuttle and earlier spacecraft, with sufficient enough power in fuel cells and batteries for their short flights, a permanently orbiting space station will have to generate its own electricity.
in fact, the default reading of such things is usually the latter of these (which, in this case, is the wrong meaning), although the ambiguity will generally be fatal.
i also find the use of "with" for this sort of instance awkward and substandard, although that is just a seasoned writer's instinct (i.e., there's no concrete basis on which i can articulate why it's awkward, other than "i do a lot of formal reading and writing and i just
know").
Also is there a pronoun issue
'their' can refer to either fuel cells and batteries or shuttle and earlier spacecraft
Obviously we know that short flights can go w shuttle and earlier spacecraft but still how is this not ambiguous ?
apparently not!
DON'T QUESTION CORRECT ANSWERS TO OFFICIAL PROBLEMS. you are completely wasting your time by doing so.
if gmac says it's correct, then it's correct, end of story.
the best way to react to this particular surprise is to try to learn the underlying rule, and to generalize it so that it's a lesson for future problems.
like, perhaps, "if you have a pronoun inside a modifier, and some noun is the object of a preposition within the same modifier, then that noun isn't eligible to be the antecedent of that pronoun".
or something like that.
remember, gmac is always revealing new little preferences through these problems. some of them are news to us, too.
but the two reasons above (especially "sufficient enough") should have been ample justification for killing choice b.
