Repetition of Articles

[ZhengJ600]

Hi GMAT Instructors,

I have a general question on repetition of an article. Two examples below:

Example 1: A person with a liberal education and "an" annual income of $70k can lead a good life.

Is "an" before annual income required?

Example 2: A person with a liberal education and "a" monthly income of $6k can lead a good life.

Is "a" before monthly income not necessarily required because "a" before liberal education can modify both liberal education and monthly income?

Many thanks for your help in advance.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

It seems that you're asking a question about parallelism. Take these two sentences:
1. Last year we traveled to France and Germany.
2. Last year we traveled to France and to Germany.
You might think the second one is wrong because the "to" before Germany is unnecessary. Actually, both sentences are fine: in the language of parallelism, in (1) the root phrase is '...we traveled to' and the parallel elements are 'France' and 'Germany'; in (2), the root phrase is '...we traveled' and the parallel elements are 'to France' and 'to Germany'. They both make sense, and concision is not an issue here. (Actually, I think concision isn't tested on GMAT - there's always something wrong with the grammar or meaning of incorrect answer choices.)

Example 1: A person with a liberal education and "an" annual income of $70k can lead a good life.
Is "an" before annual income required?

I couldn't say. Both sentences sound fine to me and I'm pretty sure that GMAT will not test you on such a minor difference.

Example 2: A person with a liberal education and "a" monthly income of $6k can lead a good life.
Is "a" before monthly income not necessarily required because "a" before liberal education can modify both liberal education and monthly income?

Again, I think both are fine, and I've never seen a GMAT problem test such a difference. However, if you have an example, I'd be interested to hear about it.

[ZhengJ600]

Got it, and thanks for your explanation, Sage.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

You're welcome.