Question
Emily Dickinson’s letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson were written over a period beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886, outnumbering her letters to anyone else.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
Sentence Analysis
Let’s look at the sentence structure:
- Emily Dickinson’s letters (Main Subject)
- to Susan Huntington Dickinson (modifying “letters”)
- were written over a period (Main verb “were written”)
- beginning a few years before Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother (Verb-ing modifier modifying “period)
- and ending shortly before Emily’s death in 1886 (Verb-ing modifier modifying “period)
- , outnumbering her letters to anyone else. (Verb-ing modifier modifying the preceding clause)
The sentence says that ED’s letters to SHD were written over a certain period. The period began a few years before xyz marriage and ended shortly before Emily’s death. These letters outnumber ED’s letters to anyone else.
The only problem in the sentence is that the verb-ing modifier “outnumbering” doesn’t seem to provide additional information about the preceding clause. The preceding clause talks about when the letters were written. The verb-ing phrase talks about the number of letters. Thus, verb-ing phrase is not providing any relevant information to the clause. Please note that this is a subtle error, ‘subtle’ especially since the “verb-ing” modifier makes sense with the subject of the clause. It is not unexpected that one may not catch this error in the first go. However, once a person has read option E, which is the correct choice, the person should have sufficient reason to read both of these options closely and then finally identify this error in option A.
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the reason mentioned above.
(B) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- The use of simple present “begins” is incorrect since we are talking about a past event.
- Two verbs “were written” and “outnumber” are not connected properly. Two verbs cannot be connected using a comma.
(C) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- The use of simple present “ends” is incorrect since we are talking about a past event.
- “beginning” and “that ends” are not parallel. Either both should be verb-ing modifiers or both should be relative clauses.
- No main verb in the sentence. Both ‘written’ and ‘outnumbering’ are modifiers.
(D) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- “beginning” and “ending” are the only two members in the list, so they cannot be joined just by a comma.
- No main verb in the sentence
(E) Correct.
Another interesting thing about this question is that in the correct option, ‘which’ modifies a quite far-away noun ‘letters’. This question must clear-up a very common misconception that a noun modifier, especially ‘which’ or ‘that’, must touch the noun.
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Though I prefer A over E please help me understand why can’t (A) logically be correct?
Can’t it be read and understood in the following way:-
Emily wrote letters to Susan, and since she wrote them over a certain period, these letters outnumber anyone else’
In other words, the verb-ing modifier is telling us that because the letters were written for such a long period, the number of these letters outnumber anyone else’
Hoozan wrote poems from 2010 to 2025, outnumbering poems written by anybody else.
Does this sentence make sense?
Hoozan wrote poems during a certain period.
V-ing modifier gives us information that his poems outnumber the poems written by anyone else.. (Does this count as ‘additional information’?)
Also, What is the function of Comma + V-ing?
1) CAUSE and EFFECT
2) Additional information about the preceding clause. Primarily, how the action was done.
Is there anything else? How should we determine when a V-ing modifier is not serving the correct functionality?
Thanks in advance, CJ 🙂
Cause and effect?
Because Hoozan wrote poems in this period
That resulted in outnumbering poems by anyone else? (Because there were so many poems?)
When I read this sentence at the first glance it seemed incorrect. But I am not 100% sure.
The below thought process comes to me:
Hoozan wrote poems from 2010 to 2025. And his action of writing poems for 15 years resulted in his poems outnumbering poems written by anybody else
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