Difficult SC

by **ajay78** Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:53 am

Q: Because Halley's comet changes orbit slightly during the seventy-six interval [u]between passing[/u]close to earth. it may veer onto a collision course with the planet sometime in the distant future.

A) between passing
B) of passing
C) Between it passes
D) of its passes
E) as it passes

Source:Gmat Plus, Book 5

I had my answer as E , but that is wrong.
PLease advise.

by **StaceyKoprince** Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:14 am

This source is a poor source from which to study. Some non-native English speakers based out of somewhere in Asia basically pirated a bunch of questions from old paper-based GMATs but the questions are filled with typos and errors, often to the point that none of the answer choices is good or the question has been garbled so that it is no longer sufficiently GMAT-like. If you want to study from old paper-based GMAT tests, at least go buy clean copies from mba.com. (Though, really, those are so old that I don't recommend them as a good source for study, either.)

This one is an example of one in which all of the choices are poor. Something got lost in translation here.

We do need "between" because we're talking about an interval. An interval is between two things (or, in this case, between two passes). So that eliminates B, D, and E

Is C perhaps supposed to say "between its passes"? Below, it says "between it passes" and that's obviously not right. If it is supposed to say "between its passes" then I guess that's the closest thing to a right answer, but - really - I wouldn't even study this one. It's not sufficiently GMAT-like.