Source: GMATprep(practice test 1:q13)

In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought its western border within reach of the Pacific Ocean.
A. In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought
B. For about four cents an acre the United States acquired, in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the country's size and it brought
C. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, more than doubling its size and bringing
D. The United States, in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, for about four cents an acre, acquired 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the country's size, bringing
E. Acquiring 828,000 square miles in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States bought it for about four cents an acre, more than doubling the country's size and bringing

how to choose right answer here? Can anybody please explain?
what's wrong with D?

I guess the answer would be C.
What is OA?

OA is C.
Ron, can you please explain what's wrong with choice D?

In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought its western border within reach of the Pacific Ocean.
A. In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought - whenever you see 'which' see what it modifies. which usually modifies the noun preceeding it. In this case it seems to modify acre which is wrong.
B. For about four cents an acre the United States acquired, in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the country's size and it brought - "in the Louisiana purchase, 828,000 sq miles....totally wordy"
C. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, more than doubling its size and bringing - its clearly reference to Unites States and "more than doubling its size correctly modifies the before clause. The meaning is preserved because it is the act of acquiring that doubled the size of the country.
D. The United States, in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, for about four cents an acre, acquired 828,000 square miles, more than doubling the country's size, bringing- D is wrong for many reasons. Easy problem is that more than doubling the country's size, bringing.....requires an "and" in between to maintain parallelism. We dont need the comma between country's size, bringing.
E. Acquiring 828,000 square miles in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States bought it for about four cents an acre, more than doubling the country's size and bringing - pronoun reference error. bought it.....bought what??? it does not have a clear antecedent.

thanks sd.

hmm.

well, the first and foremost thing about choice (d) is that it's absolutely horrible.
if you were a native speaker, you would look at it and want to throw things against the wall. it's just that bad (in terms of total awkwardness).

weirdly enough, i don't think there is anything that is actually ungrammatical about it. i think its primary problems have to do with clarity:
* "in the louisiana purchase" is placed AFTER "the united states". this placement implies that the united states itself is actually contained within the louisiana purchase.
* "for about four cents an acre" is placed in a place that is unclear.

also:
* the cadence of the sentence is just awful. it's like blurt, comma, blurt, comma, blurt, comma, blurt, etc.
this is not the sort of thing that a non-native speaker could be expected to reject right away, but this is just not the style of acceptable writing.

Hi Ron,
Could you please explain what strategy did you apply to choose C over E while scanning options.
Would it be correct to say that one of the reasons could be that there's redundancy in E (acquiring...LP of 1803,..and bought it...) since it mentions "bought" again after already saying "acquiring".

Thanks!

pronoun reference error.

hmm. to be perfectly honest, i applied my "native speaker's eyes" and just knocked that choice out because of its excessive weirdness.

but... you have a pronoun shift; you have "it" and "its" in the same clause, but they're trying to refer to different things. that's not acceptable.

In the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles for about four cents an acre, which more than doubled the country's size and that brought its western border within reach of the Pacific Ocean.

Parallel Construction / Misplaced Modifier / Logical Predication

The purpose of this sentence is to indicate that The United States doubled its size as a result of the Louisiana purchase of 1803. The stem is structured with two Noun Modifiers: in the Louisiana (...) and which more than doubled (...). The modifier in the Louisiana (...) is wrong because The US did not doubled its size inside a historical moment; on the contrary it doubled its size as a result of (with) that purchase. The other modifier, which more than doubled (...), is in my opinion the trickiest not only because it should correctly modify the noun but also it should have a correct parallel construction. "which" wrongfully modifies the word "acre" and "that brought" has a nonsensical relation with "country's size". To solve this problems "which" has to be eliminated and the appositive clause "more than (...)" needs to be fixed by paralleling "more than double" and "bring" to the noun "The United States". The only way to connect "more than double" and "bring" with "The United States" is by using present participle ING (MGMAT SC 4th Edition Page 91).

Therefore the Answer is C

the stuff you've written here may be true, but it sets a dangerous precedent -- namely, this paragraph is written with the seeming intent of trying to fix the sentence.
when you do these problems, you should not think about how to fix the sentence!
you should only think about eliminating things that are incorrect!

this is extremely important, because all but the simplest sentences can be rewritten in many, many legitimate ways. therefore, even if you come up with a valid way to “fix” the sentence, it's extremely unlikely that your "fix" will happen to be identical to the correct answer.

I wonder what more then doubling its size means. U.S's size?? Really

Ah After Wiki, I know. Before, I thought only state of Louisiana now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase encompassed all or part of 14 current U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River, most of North Dakota, nearly all of South Dakota, northeastern New Mexico, the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide, and Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans.

yep.
the louisiana purchase was REALLY big. check out the map.

Dear Ron, could you please tell me why C is right. I am really confused with the last part of C --- more than doubling its size and bringing. It seems that more than... and bringing are jointly modifying 828,000 square miles, am I right? Is it a kind of independent genitive construction?