In preparation for the cold winter .....

[aggarwal.mail]

In preparation for the cold winter months, it was the usual custom for prehistoric people to gather and preserve, with smoke or by salting it, as much meat that they could during the summer.
A) it was the usual custom for prehistoric people to gather and preserve, with smoke or by salting it, as much meat that they could during the summer.
B) prehistoric people usually gathered as much meat as they could during the summer, preserving it either by smoking or salting
C) it was the usual custom of prehistoric people to gather and preserve, either with smoke or by salting, as much meat that they could during the summer
D) prehistoric people had the usual custom of gathering and preserving as much meat, either by smoking or salting it, as they could during the summer
E) it was usually that prehistoric people would gather and preserve as much meat as they could, which was either smoked or salted during the summer



Answer is B, which uses "either by X or Y". Is it right? MGT SC mentions that correct idiom is either X or Y.

[ashish2104]

IMO B.

Correct idiom is either X or Y where X and Y are parallel.

In B, pronoun they correctly refers to prehistoric people and it correctly refers to meat(it cannot refer to people- rule of proximity)


Thanks,
Ashish

[aggarwal.mail]

instructors plz help !!


both "by X" and Y are verb modifers. Is it acceptable because of this reason ?

[tim]

Aggarwal, you are correct. Choice B as you have written it is incorrect. However, you really should think of this as a parallelism issue rather than an idiom issue. Why? Because the rules for parallelism are much more rigid and easy to remember..

I will flag this question for review because of the error it contains; thanks for pointing it out..