Despite entering the courthouse with police escort, the lead attorney and his assistant, manhandled by an aggressive
crowd of reporters that bombarded him with questions, was injured seriously enough to warrant immediate medical attention.

Despite entering the courthouse with police escort, the lead attorney and his assistant, manhandled by an aggressive crowd of reporters that bombarded him with questions, was injured seriously enough to warrant immediate medical attention.
Despite the fact that the lead attorney and his assistant entered the courthouse with police escort, they were manhandled by an aggressive crowd of reporters that bombarded the attorney with questions and injured him so seriously that he needed immediate medical attention.
Despite their entering the courthouse with police escort, the lead attorney and his assistant were manhandled by an aggressive crowd of reporters that bombarded him with questions, injuring him so seriously as to warrant immediate medical attention.
Despite the fact that they entered the courthouse with police escort, the lead attorney and his assistant, having been manhandled by an aggressive crowd of reporters, was bombarded with questions and injured seriously enough to warrant immediate medical attention.
Despite entering the courthouse with police escort, the lead attorney and his assistant were manhandled by an aggressive crowd of reporters that bombarded him with questions and injured him so seriously as to warrant immediate medical attention.



OA is B.

I think "despite the fact that" is wordy. I remember reading in one of the OG qns that "despite the fact that" is awkward. If it's always the case, then I feel this question itself is wrong.

You cannot eliminate just based on wordiness until you have dealt with all potential grammatical issues. In fact, a wordier answer can be right (especially on a more difficult question) if the less wordy options contain grammatical errors.

If you have two options that both appear to be completely grammatically correct and both have a clear and unambiguous meaning, then you can use concision or "wordiness" to decide. But only if you've already dealt with any grammar and clarity issues.

In this case, the four wrong answers have clear grammatical errors.

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Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

In the explanation of the answers, it says

"despite" is not properly used with a verb phrase. Instead, it requires a noun or noun phrase. For example, "Despite eating the apple..." is not correct, but "Despite his eating the apple..." is correct.

Nevertheless, it seems that the above explanation contradicts the use of "despite" from SC Ch 9 Idioms P. 147, which mentions that below is a grammatically correct sentence:

RIGHT: Despite taking frequent naps, I study effectively.

Here in this correct example, "taking frequent naps" is a verb phrase but is used together with "despite".

Can any instructor pls explain? Thank you!

can you provide a source for the problem and the explanation? not only is your quoted explanation incorrect, but "his" is also not even a noun. in other words, WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN IN BRIGHT BLUE IS ABSOLUTELY INCORRECT..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

This problem comes from Q9 of the bonus SC question bank from MGMAT web site. The explanation is also directly quoted from there.

So do you mean the "official" explanation in MGMAT web site is absolutely incorrect? If it's really incorrect, can you tell me what the correct use of "despite" is? Thank you!

My apologies for calling you out like that. This is MGMAT's fault, and yes that part of the explanation is wrong. Simply changing "eating" to "his eating" does not change this from a verb phrase to a noun phrase; i think i know what the question author was trying to do here, but the change is to subtle to be meaningful. To answer your question, the best use of "despite" is perhaps best exemplified by the "despite the fact" phrasing in the correct answer to the problem at hand here..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor

Thanks for your reply. In the explanation of choice E there, it says

"the word "despite" is incorrectly followed by the verb "entering" instead of a noun or noun phrase".

So is it also an incorrect explanation there?

Can 'despite' be followed by a "gerund", such as
" Despite entering the courthouse with police escort, ..." (as in Choice E)?

Thanks.

Hi Thomas,

Great catch! You have spotted an error in our explanation. I'm very sorry about that and we'll get it fixed up quickly. Regarding your larger point, despite is a preposition and can be followed by a gerund such as entering.

The explanation for this answer choice incorrectly identifies "entering" as a verb. Remember that we'll often see gerunds on the test as they are often confused with finite verbs that have qualities such as tense and number. These gerunds are a type of non-finite verb, or verbal, that actually do not fulfill a verb or action like role. Other verbals include participles and infinitives.

Thanks again for the catch and we'll get the test explanation fixed!

Chris

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Chris Brusznicki
MGMAT Instructor
Chicago, IL

I had the exact confusion as thomaskk, a little while ago while going through the MGMAT question bank.

1. I was torn between B and E.

2. Wasn't sure about B - because the "Despite the fact.... " has been regarded as awkward here.

3. Wasn't sure about E - because of the little pronoun abiguity with "him" .

In the end, as has been propopounded by RON, I considered pronoun ambiguity as the lesser devil and chose E :(

Any closure on this question and the little confusion regarding " ... the fact... " usage?

Actually, I searched and couldn't find any posts about "despite the fact that" having been regarded as awkward. I've seen this construction on several correct answer choices over my years as an instructor.

As to the pronoun ambiguity, this pronoun is REALLY ambiguous. We have two candidates for who "he" and "him" are referring to, but no idea of which who it is (the attorney or his assistant). For this reason I would rule out E.

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Thanks Jamie for the reply.

:)

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor