In the major cities of industrialized countries at the end

by **garryrother** Sun Aug 11, 2013 4:54 pm

Hi Experts,

A naive question irrelevant to the answer. If we are talking about houses, shouldn't we use "fewer than" one percent? Again, I am not contesting OA, but just trying to understand the concept.

Thanks for your time.
Garry

by **thanghnvn** Mon Aug 12, 2013 12:25 am

We have to admit that if choice B stand alone, choice B is logic and correct. But if choice B stand by choice A, choice B is considered distorted meaning.

THE RULE: if there are 2 correct choices, we keep the meaning of the original.

my question is that if we put the choice B in the place of choice A and the choice A in the place of choice B, what is the correct?

in this case, choice B is OA because the choice B is the original. we have no reason to eliminate the choice B when the choice B is in place of the original.

is that right?

This situation that there are 2 correct choices dose exist in the gmatprep but dose not exist in the og books. There is no quesitions in og books, which give us this situation.

by **thanghnvn** Mon Aug 12, 2013 12:26 am

sorry, I post to tick the notification box.

by **RonPurewal** Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:38 am

garryrother Wrote:Hi Experts,

A naive question irrelevant to the answer. If we are talking about houses, shouldn't we use "fewer than" one percent? Again, I am not contesting OA, but just trying to understand the concept.

Thanks for your time.
Garry

i'd agree with this. fortunately, though, it's a non-issue in this problem, since it's not replaced by anything else in any of the answer choices.

by **RonPurewal** Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:44 am

thanghnvn Wrote:THE RULE: if there are 2 correct choices, we keep the meaning of the original.

there will never be "two correct choices".

it should make no difference which choice is (a). if you scramble the choices, the correct answer will still be the same choice.

by **thanghnvn** Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:14 am

thank you Ron,

B is not logic because "and lighting..." is not suitable with the first part of sentence.

so there are no 2 correct choices in this sc problem.

however, in some gmatprep question, there are two choices/meanings both of which are correct. So the meaning /choice which is not the original is considered distorted meaning, compared with the meaning of choice A.

by **RonPurewal** Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:29 am

thanghnvn Wrote:thank you Ron,

B is not logic because "and lighting..." is not suitable with the first part of sentence.

so there are no 2 correct choices in this sc problem.

however, in some gmatprep question, there are two choices/meanings both of which are correct. So the meaning /choice which is not the original is considered distorted meaning, compared with the meaning of choice A.

can you cite an official problem that supposedly has "2 correct answers"?

by **MdAbuAsad** Sat Nov 26, 2016 6:59 am

Guest Wrote:In the major cities of industrialized countries at the end of the nineteenth century, important public places such as theaters, restaurants, shops, and banks had installed electric lighting, but electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still provided mainly by candles or gas.
A. electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still
B. electricity was in less than one percent of homes and lighting still
C. there were less than one percent of homes with electricity, where lighting was still being
D. there was less than one percent of homes that had electricity, having lighting that was still
E. less than one percent of homes had electricity, where lighting had still been

Attention to Ron and Stacey,
This thread has been changed the official version in wrong way. The red part has no existence in the official guide (this question also seems to OG) and this option C should be inserted with some other words (green words). The original question should be like below.

In the major cities of industrialized countries at the end of the nineteenth century, important public places such as theaters, restaurants, shops, and banks had installed electric lighting, but electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still provided mainly by candles or gas.

(A) electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still
(B) electricity was in less than one percent of homes and lighting still
(C) there had been less than one percent of homes with electricity, where lighting was still being
(D) there was less than one percent of homes that had electricity, having lighting that was still
(E) less than one percent of homes had electricity, where lighting had still been
here, the green part is the inserted part according to official guide. i think the original post should be corrected so as to avoid misunderstanding. Thank you

by **RonPurewal** Sun Dec 18, 2016 3:23 pm

thanks.

by **patriciaz579** Sat Feb 25, 2017 12:04 am

hi ron,

need your help .

i can not understand the verb tense here, the first sentence use the past perfect , but the second sentence use the past . there is just a time point. at the end of the nineteenth century. i think the sentence is in a timeframe here. what is this verb tense meaning ?

In the major cities of industrialized countries at the end of the nineteenth century,important public places such as theaters, restaurants, shops, and banks had installed electric lighting, but electricity was in less than 1 percent of homes, where lighting was still provided mainly by candles or gas.

by **RonPurewal** Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:12 am

nah, no issue. these are perfectly ordinary uses of these tenses.

had installed --> describes something that had already been completed by the time described (but that still had some sort of impact upon the situation at that time).

was --> describes the actual situation at the time described.

by **JbhB682** Thu Jun 15, 2017 3:56 pm

Hi - in A --- why is okay to have electricity as the first word ....

Seems to break the parallelism ...

---- important public places such as X, Y and Z has installed lighting but _ _ _ _ _ _

After the but, should it not be "places" again (or something that signifies a places like a home perhaps) . I say this because the parallelism is between places AND places

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Instead A is talking about electricity ...

Please let me know why is this a non issue

Thank you !

------------------------------------------

In the major cities of industrialized countries at the end of the nineteenth century, important public places such as theaters, restaurants, shops, and banks had installed electric lighting, but electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still provided mainly by candles or gas.

A. electricity was in less than one percent of homes, where lighting was still
B. electricity was in less than one percent of homes and lighting still
C. there had been less than 1 percent of homes with electricity, where lighting was still being
D. there was less than 1 percent of homes that had electricity, having lighting that was still
E. less than one percent of homes had electricity, where lighting had still been

by **Sage Pearce-Higgins** Mon Jul 03, 2017 4:59 am

Good question - this is a tricky problem. When we're checking clauses for parallelism (here, the word "but" is joining two would-be complete sentences) we don't need to have the same category of noun, in the same way we do for comparisons. It's okay to have "public places" as one subject, and "electricity" as the next one. We need to be careful not to overdo parallelism. Notice the mistakes in B-E: they're more serious than the minor lack of parallelism in A.

by **LeY52** Wed Oct 11, 2017 11:37 pm

Hi experts
I still have some problems with the verb tense in option E.
Can 'had been' implies a lasting action in the past?

When we use have done, we can say, for example, I have been working on this project since last month. This sentence means that I strated the project last month and I still work on it now. Right?

Thanks

by **Sage Pearce-Higgins** Fri Oct 13, 2017 4:47 am

Check out the verb tense chapter of the Sentence Correction Strategy Guide. 'has been' (present perfect) has several uses in English, but the basic idea is that it connects the past to the present. In the example you state (totally correct), it is for an action that started in the past and is still going on. However, you can also use it for the potential of actions to continue. Take the following examples:

My grandmother has written 2 books.
My grandmother wrote 2 books.

In the second example, the sentence means that she's not going to write any more (she's retired, or perhaps died), whereas in the first example she could write more.

Also, we can use present perfect for recent actions, especially when we can see the result, as in "Look! I've cut my finger!".

However, answer E uses 'had been', a different tense called 'past perfect'. Check out the Strategy Guide for more on this one.

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