Hi MGMAT staff,

Almost we all have trouble with the usage of BEING, HAVING, HOPEFULLY and HAS BEEN/HAVE BEEN.

Also I have heard that at 700+ level, GMAT SC questions are focused on these words. Is it possible to give some examples about the usage of above words in context of GMAT?

Thanks,
Desislava

hmmm.

"has been"/"have been" is purely an issue of singular/plural agreement: "has" is singular, and "have" is plural.
to resolve this issue, you should find the subject of the split verb, decide whether that subject is singular or plural, and then pick the verb accordingly. when you select the correct subject for a verb, remember to disregard things such as modifiers, prepositional phrases, and other descriptive elements that don't constitute part of the basic "skeleton" of the sentence.

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i have no idea what you're talking about re: "hopefully". please post an example sentence that gives a context for that one. thank you.

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"being" should NEVER be used to express description or equivalence. in other words, if you're saying that X is Y, where X is a noun (thing or person) and Y is either another noun or a description, you should NOT use "being".
so, if jane is a dancer, you should generally not pick a sentence that includes "being a dancer..." to describe jane.

this DOES NOT mean, however, that "being" is just plain wrong overall. it can sometimes be essential, as in the context of the passive voice (see this problem).

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you'll have to post examples for "having", to clarify what you mean. it's most commonly used in descriptive modifiers ("having done X, jim went on to do Y"), but i'd like to see the particular example(s) you had in mind.

Hi Ron,

I have been having some issues with the usage of "Have Been or Has Been",particularly when Have/Has been comes along with a Participle.

For e.g:
How long have this thing been Going on,
Has been gone out of town for quite some time
Have been duped by the investors

Can you please let me know what you find wrong in the above sentences.

Secondly,how does usage of Past Participle and Present Participle alter the meaning of the Tense of sentence.

E.g:
1)The group of students have been partying hard since last night.
2) The group of students has partied hard last night
3) The group of students has been partying hard since last night
4) The group of students parties hard last night
5)The group of students had been partying hard since last night

Between 'partied' and 'partying' usage what is correct as Participle.In GMAT land what is the correct question type from above that we will be tested on ?

Thanks ,
Apoorv