Actually I found "where there is" in E very awkward, I am hoping I am right on that and so threw it out...so Ron you say that the only thing wrong with C is the misplaced comma? otherwise would C be preferred over E?

s.ashwin, please go back and read Ron's explanation of this problem. E has superior parallelism to C, which Ron explains in his posts on the previous page.

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

I got the right answer E. B and D are straight out because of the missing AND.

and I understand E has superior parallelism to C.


But my query is :

Is A wrong only because of the that ? or is the passive construction all together faulty ?

what if A read :

(A) where there is still a sizable wolf population, and where

and E read

(E) where there is still a sizable population of wolves and where

Is A still wrong ? Or are both if the constructions above correct ?

"that" by itself is not wrong; the error is that this construction is nonparallel to its counterpart (which starts with "where").



please review the definition of "passive construction"; there are no passive constructions anywhere in this problem (or in any of its answer choices).


that would be fine, provided that you removed the comma. (you don't have to worry about that, as punctuation is not tested on this exam -- but i'm noting it for completeness.)

once the comma is gone, the only difference between this choice and the official answer is "wolf population" vs. "population of wolves"; either of those constructions is fine.

Ron --

You explained that "wolf" in wolf population is the adjective and we cannot use "this predator" for an adjective.

I think this is a solid reason to kick out A and B.

But in this post you have mentioned that -- either of those are correct. Do you have anything handy where a pronoun or a noun is used to refer an adjective ?

Other than that, I understand why other options are incorrect. Just want to make sure about the rule you had quoted earlier .

Also, since we are talking about a place - Minnesota - can we prefer "where" to "that" ?

thanks

Isn't "and also" redundant?

Please help

Hi Ron:
As you say choice (c) isn't appropriate, there should not be a comma in the construction "X and Y" unless "X" and "Y" are independent clauses. I cannot understand very well about what you say, can you provide examples including " clause + , and + clause" structure and "clause + and + clause" structure.

And there is another sample question which I think is similar to this one:

Joachim Raff and Giacomo Meyerbeer are examples of the kind of composer who receives popular acclaim while living, often goes into decline after death, and never regains popularity again.

(A) often goes into decline after death, and never regains popularity again

(B) whose reputation declines after death and never regains its status again

(C) but whose reputation declines after death and never regains its former status

(D) who declines in reputation after death and who never regained popularity again

(E) then has declined in reputation after death and never regained popularity

The OA is C
Here is the clause which has the structure: "clause + ,but + clause", will it be OK without the comma before but?

punctuation is not tested on this exam, so it's not worth going into extreme detail about matters of punctuation. also, the rules of punctuation are generalizations, but they do have exceptions -- especially in the case of abnormally long or short sentences. in particular, abnormally long constructions may contain more punctuation than would normally be allowed, because they might otherwise be unreadable. similarly, abnormally short constructions may omit some of the usual punctuation.

for instance, independent clauses are usually separated by a comma before “and/but”; however, if the two clauses are very short, you may see the sentence without the separating comma. for instance, i am a boy and sarah is a girl is short enough not to require an intervening comma.
similarly, in the case of an “and” that separates parallel structures that aren't clauses, you usually won't see a comma; however, if the parallel elements are long enough, you may see a comma anyway because the sentence would otherwise be unreadable. for instance:
i shut the windows and locked the doors --> no comma is necessary here.
i shut the windows so securely that they would be impossible to open, and locked the doors using both the deadbolts and the regular locks --> the sentence would basically be unreadable without the comma in the middle.

--

in any case, the main lesson you should get from this post is “punctuation isn't tested, so it isn't worth worrying about.”

as for the problem in this thread -- the main lesson of this problem is that parallelism should be judged relative to other answer choices.
if you look for absolute criteria on which to judge choices (a) and (c), you'll probably find it quite hard to eliminate those choices. on the other hand, if you simply look at them relative to choice (e) and realize that their parallelism is much worse than the parallelism in choice (e), then this problem poses much less of a challenge.

Hi Ron,
13. Minnesota is the only one of the contiguous forty-eight states that still has a sizable wolf population, and where this predator remains the archenemy of cattle and sheep.
A. that still has a sizable wolf population, and where
B. that still has a sizable wolf population, where
C. that still has a sizable population of wolves, and where
D. where the population of wolves is still sizable;
E. where there is still a sizable population of wolves and where

Though got most of the points mentioned in this post, just wanted to reaffirm my understanding regarding Subject-Verb here.Am I correct in interpreting that In this question, A,B And C doesn't have the Subject-Verb problem(because all these choices are following with "the", and are correctly followed by "has").

correct. the subject of those verbs is "the only one (+ prep phrase)".
there are thus no errors in subject-verb agreement in this problem.