MGMAT CAT

With companies spending large parts of their advertising budgets online, the market for content such as feature articles and opinion essays created by a professional writer, a blogger, and by individual users, are expanding rapidly.

A: the market for content such as feature articles and opinion essays created by a professional writer, a blogger, and by individual users, are expanding
B: the market for content such as feature articles and opinion essays created by professional writers, bloggers, and by individual users, are expanding
C: the market for content such as feature articles and opinion essays created by a professional writer, a blogger, and individual users, is expanding
D: the market for content such as feature articles and opinion essays created by professional writers, bloggers, and individual users, are expanding
E: the market for content such as feature articles and opinion essays created by professional writers, bloggers, and individual users, is expanding

OA: E

Why do we need to check number in parallelism. I am not convinced for OE.
I believe that in such a situation, original meaning should be intact and not to make all plural or singular. I selected C.

OE
C: This choice has proper subject-verb agreement since the singular "market" agrees with the singular verb phrase "is expanding." However, the list of 3 types of creators is not written in parallel form. While "a professional writer" and "a blogger" are singular, the third element in the list, "individual users," is plural.

E: The phrase "created by professional writers, bloggers, and individual users" lists elements in parallel form. Each element in the list is plural and the entire list is introduced by the word "by" which is correctly not repeated. In addition, the singular subject "market" agrees with the singular verb phrase "is expanding."

You know, I would look at this more as a meaning issue. We have a market for content created by a group of people. If I say "a professional writer, a blogger" that means that there is a market for one particular writer as well as one particular blogger. Does that make sense? Or does it make sense that the market exists for "professional writers, bloggers" who will be contributing to this new site?

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor