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JiaojiaoW394
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The Bentley trench, situated at

by JiaojiaoW394 Wed Nov 16, 2016 9:06 am

Hello.
I have a question regarding problem 12 on page 43(e-book) of the Sentence Correction guide, 5th edition.

Fix the following sentence, the sentence is "The Bentley trench, situated at more than a mile and a half below sea level and completely covered by Antarctic glaciers, and it is the lowest point on the planet not under the oceans."

The correct answer to this question is "The Bentley trench, situated at more than a mile and a half below sea level and completely covered by Antarctic glaciers, IS the lowest point on the planet not under the oceans."

I understand the wrong usage of "and", but can I fix the sentence in this way?
"The Bentley trench, situated at more than a mile and a half below sea level , IS completely covered by Antarctic glaciers ,and it is the lowest point on the planet not under the oceans."

Thank you very much. :wink:
Jiaojiao
RonPurewal
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Re: The Bentley trench, situated at

by RonPurewal Mon Nov 28, 2016 2:17 am

that version creates parallelism between two items that don't really make sense in parallel.

more importantly—
DO NOT "create your own versions" of MPrep or GMAC problems!

this exam only tests about 1 percent (perhaps even less) of the things that can actually go wrong with an english sentence. if you try to invent your own options, they will almost certainly contain issues that are not tested on the exam.

please stick to considering options that are actually published in the materials.
thank you.
JbhB682
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Re: The Bentley trench, situated at

by JbhB682 Sat Apr 07, 2018 12:41 pm

RonPurewal Wrote:that version creates parallelism between two items that don't really make sense in parallel.

more importantly—
DO NOT "create your own versions" of MPrep or GMAC problems!

this exam only tests about 1 percent (perhaps even less) of the things that can actually go wrong with an english sentence. if you try to invent your own options, they will almost certainly contain issues that are not tested on the exam.

please stick to considering options that are actually published in the materials.
thank you.


Hi Ron - not sure i understand why are we looking at parallelism in the below sentence per your post ...

These are 2 independent sentences given the comma + and

Please let me know your thoughts

The Bentley trench, situated at more than a mile and a half below sea level , IS completely covered by Antarctic glaciers ,and it is the lowest point on the planet not under the oceans."
Sage Pearce-Higgins
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Re: The Bentley trench, situated at

by Sage Pearce-Higgins Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:58 am

When we use the word 'and' we're always looking for some kind of parallel construction. It could be two independent clauses, but here we have two facts about the Bentley Trench. The error here is to include the word 'it'; the correct construction runs 'The Bentley Trench does this...., and does this.' It may seem like a small difference, but it's one of GMAT's favorite traps on SC problems.