1. "Based on the analysis presented in the report, the company decided to aggressively market its product in the Chinese market."

Is this sentence correct? Or should it be:

2. "Because of the analysis presented in the report, the company decided to aggressively market the product in the Chinese market."
3. "Using the analysis presented in the report, the company decided to aggressively market the product in the Chinese market."

or

4. "Based on the analysis presented in the report, a decision was made by the company to aggressively market its product in the Chinese market."

According to OG11, in the first sentence, "based on incorrectly modifies the noun company" and hence is wrong.

In sentences 2,3,4 the modifier correctly modifies the verb "decision" and hence are correct.

I do not seem to be able to nail down a rule for such questions. Can anyone clarify this to me and present a more general way to tackle "Based on" vs. "Bacause of"?

Thanks,
Vik

We can't discuss OG questions on this forum, but I couldn't find your example in there anyway. Maybe your source is cited incorrectly? Please confirm if so. In any case, there is an OG question (#20, 11th edition) that you may want to check out. It's not identical, but related.

Here's a general way to evaluate modifiers, especially those set off by commas at the beginning of a sentence. Phrase it as a question, like on Jeopardy. The answer to the question must follow the comma. So for your examples:

1. "Based on the analysis presented in the report" becomes "WHAT was based on the analysis?" Answer: a decision. Because "the company" comes after the comma, this is a misplaced modifier.

2. "Because of the analysis presented in the report" becomes "WHAT was because of the analysis?" Answer: a decision, or maybe the specifics of the decision. Again, this is wrong because the phrase modifies "the company" instead. Additionally, I think it is more idiomatic to say a decision is "based on" something rather than "because of" something. "Because of" implies that the decision was prompted by the analysis, whereas "based on" means the decision was influenced by the analysis.

3. "Using the analysis presented in the report" becomes "WHO/WHAT used the analysis?" Answer: employees/managers of the company. This example is borderline, in my opinion, as a company doesn't technically use analysis, the people who work at the company do.

4. "Based on the analysis presented in the report" becomes "WHAT was based on the analysis?" Answer: a decision, which is exactly what we find after the comma. This modifier is correct.

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Emily Sledge
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ManhattanGMAT