SC

[carterwar]

1. With his sub-four minute mile Bannister broke a psychological barrier, inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming seemingly insurmountable hurdles.

A. inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming
B. inspiring thousands of others to attempt to overcome
C. inspiring thousands of others to overcome
D. and inspired thousands of others to attempt to overcome
E. and inspired thousands of others to attempt overcoming

The answer is D;however, according to Manhattan GMAT SC 8th edition page 190 in the Connecting Punctuation section, "Do not use a comma before and to separate two verbs that have the same subject. Either eliminate......''. I eliminate D and E after the first glimpse. Some people say this question is designed to test whether you understand the sequence of the question. To justify the answer D, I think it is because the answer D is all about meaning, and the answer B is all about concision. As pointed out in chapter 1 Manhattan GMAT SC, grammar>meaning>concision; therefore the answer B yields to D. Is my reasoning correct? Please help.

[Willy]

1. With his sub-four minute mile Bannister broke a psychological barrier, inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming seemingly insurmountable hurdles.

A. inspiring thousands of others to attempt overcoming
B. inspiring thousands of others to attempt to overcome
C. inspiring thousands of others to overcome
D. and inspired thousands of others to attempt to overcome
E. and inspired thousands of others to attempt overcoming

The answer is D;however, according to Manhattan GMAT SC 8th edition page 190 in the Connecting Punctuation section, "Do not use a comma before and to separate two verbs that have the same subject. Either eliminate......''. I eliminate D and E after the first glimpse. Some people say this question is designed to test whether you understand the sequence of the question. To justify the answer D, I think it is because the answer D is all about meaning, and the answer B is all about concision. As pointed out in chapter 1 Manhattan GMAT SC, grammar>meaning>concision; therefore the answer B yields to D. Is my reasoning correct? Please help.

I don't think the answer can be D or E. As COMMA is not underlined so adding AND after comma will try wrongly to make two independent clause connected via COMMA + AND as after the comma there is no independent clause. Here in D and E there is fake parallelism.

[tim]

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