Some patients who do not respond

[RonPurewal]

Is E incorrect because -
'have a drug prescription (simple present/active)' and 'have been taken off (present perfect/passive) are not parallel. Which one is a bigger deal tense or voice change?

Experts pls help

"been..." is not parallel to anything.

[YUENT430]

Ron, I ruled out A & B because I always thought that ", Ving" construction indicates a cause-and-effect relationship. The second part is the result, not the cause. But it is not the case here?

Could you let me know if I overlooked something of this rule or misunderstood it?

Thank you.

[RonPurewal]

"comma __ing" isn't ALWAYS cause-effect. there are a variety of possible relationships between the "__ing" and the main sentence, of which cause-effect is just one.

another such relationship is just "elaborating on the idea of the main sentence in greater detail", which is what's happening here.

[JingziL752]

Hi tutor,

I have read through the whole thread but I still have several doubts about the parallelism.

1. In general, can helping verb ( have/has) parallel with the be verb ( am/is/are) ?

2.Is the verb tense before and after " and" must be the same? Or the verb tense should be decided by the meaning of sentence?
e.g. I am a loyal employee of my company and I will always be.

3.Is the voice before and after "and/or" must be the same? the passive voice and the passive voice

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

In my experience, when students first understand parallelism they tend to overuse it. Verb tenses certainly don't have to be parallel; the example you give ("I am a loyal employee of my company and I will always be.") would be better if you omitted the second "I": I am a loyal employee of my company and will always be. The meaning is clear and the sentence is now fine.

So, yes, a verb with 'has' can be parallel to a verb with 'is': The company has experienced difficulties, but is now doing well. My preferred test for parallelism is to change the order of the elements and see if the grammar of the sentence works (although sometimes the meaning will change). In this example, you could write ;The company is now doing well, but has experienced difficulties.' and the sentence still works.

As for active and passive voice, the situation is more tricky. Generally it's not okay, but I wouldn't want to make a rigid rule here. The classic example is SC 765 from OG 2017.

Although it's good to consider questions such as the ones you posted above, I would encourage you to work mostly with real examples and not stray too far from GMAT material.

[JingziL752]

Hi Sage,

Thank you for your reply! I knew that we cannot post og problem here, so were you referring to the "starfish" problem? If you were, is the first "and" connects one active and one passive voice?

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

No. The parallelism I'm referring to comes from the if x y construction. Check out the Navigator explanation for that problem.

[JingziL752]

I see. Thank you!

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]