Subject and verb agreement in advance parallalism`

[saxenankit]

Please refer to question no 13 on page no 218.

My questions -

1. Please confirm that using benefit or benefits does not depend on the number (singular or plural) of the thing(s) that has/have those benefit(s)
In other words -
Can I say that either - benefits of X and Y or benefit of X and Y can be used. The usage would depend on whether I feel both X and Y have 1 or more benefits. Correct ?

2. Also the explanation to that problem says that we could have used benefit outweighs cost
Why are we making benefit parallel to cost ?

Thanks for your valuable time.

[tim]

1. it depends on whether they collectively offer a single benefit or whether they each offer a benefit..

2. presumably, if they offer a single benefit they would incur a single cost. this is not absolutely necessary though, but you would keep these parallel unless there is reason to believe there is only a single benefit but multiple costs..