According to a recent poll, owning and living in a freestanding house on its own land is still a goal of a majority of young adults, like that of earlier generations.

(A) like that of earlier generations
(B) as that for earlier generations
(C) just as earlier generations did
(D) as have earlier generations
(E) as it was of earlier generations

I thought that "like" was used for comparing persons or things, and "as" was used for comparing actions.

In the sentence above, it is comparing the goal of a majority of young adults to the goal of earlier generations, so I thought that the answer would be A. But indeed, the answer is E.

Why??

Thanks in advance.

You can often convey the same message using either "like" or "as" - it just depends on how that specific sentence is constructed.

Be careful with the placement of "like" in such sentences. It's preferable to have "like" be as close as possible to the nouns it is comparing. If there are other nouns in between, that can muddle the message. In this case, we have "majority of young adults" before the "like." We're not saying that the "majority of young adults" are like "earlier generations." We're saying that the two groups have similar goals.

In this case, the only option they give us to fix the problem is to change the "like" to "as." The entire clause means "as owning... a house on its own land was a goal of earlier generations." And, of course, since I'm using a verb here (was), I have to use "as."

So this sentence:

Like that of earlier generations, owning and living in a freestanding house on its own land is still a goal of a majority of young adults.

is okay?

Thanks in advance.

That sentence doesn't really cut it. Here's why:

The correct choice in the original post has a very clear parallel structure: is still a goal of a majority of young adults, as it was (a goal) of earlier generations. Because of the strong parallelism, there's nothing else that the end phrase could possibly refer to.

In your most recent sentence, however, 'that of earlier generations' is a problem. Specifically, 'that of' doesn't have a clear referent, because there's no strong parallel structure to determine it anymore. It could conceivably stand for 'goal', 'majority', or perhaps even 'freestanding house' or 'land'. And if you go by the best possible parallelism, 'that of' seems to refer to a majority, because that's the word placed right before '...OF young adults' (which seems to work in parallel with '...OF earlier generations').

Based on recent box office receipts, the public's appetite for documentary films, like nonfiction books, seems to be on the rise.

A. like nonfiction books
B. as nonfiction books
C. as its interest in nonfiction books
D. like their interest in nonfiction books
E. like its interest in nonfiction books

So this is a similar type of SC question that tests like vs as. I chose answer C but the explanation says that you have to use E because you are comparing nouns. In an explanation below I saw that you have to be careful when using 'like' if there are nouns between the two things being compared. Here the two things being compared are appetite and interest; however, documentary films falls between the two, so doesn't this violate the rule you were talking about? Is there any other clear cut way to distinguish between when to use like vs as? It still really confuses me.

Here's another way of thinking about it:
Generally, you use 'as' to compare VERBS or WAYS in which things happen.
Generally, you use 'like' THINGS (nouns).

So the first example in this thread uses 'as' because of the comparison between VERBS/WAYS ('as it was of...'). Notice that, if the sentence were written in a manner that compared nouns or noun phrases (such as 'The goal of the current generation, LIKE THAT OF previous generations, is...'), then you'd use 'like'.

In your most recent example, the two things being compared are most definitely things (nouns) - the appetite for this and the appetite for that. There are no verbs in the comparison at all, so you use 'like' for sure.

Hope that helps.