Question
A pioneer journalist, Nellie Bly’s exploits included circling the globe faster than Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg.
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
The sentence says that Nellie Bly was a pioneer journalist and that his exploits included circling the globe faster than a fictional character.
The error in the sentence is that the beginning modifier ‘a pioneer journalist’ illogically modifies the following noun “exploits”; it cannot modify “Nellie Bly” since “Nellie Bly” is acting not as a noun but as an adjective to “exploits”.
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the error mentioned above.
(B) Correct. In this option, “a pioneer journalist” correctly modifies ‘Nellie Bly’.
(C) Incorrect. For the following reasons:
- The use of the article “the” before the gerund “circling the globe” is incorrect.
- The verb-ing modifier “including”, without a preceding comma, modifies the noun ‘journalist’. This part is equivalent to “journalist who was including”. The sense of continuity depicted by the part is stylistically awkward. A better version would be “journalist who included”. Even with this modification, the sentence would “NB was a journalist who included..”, which would mean that Nellie Bly was a kind of journalist who did a certain thing. While this meaning is not non-sensical, it is inferior to the meaning communicated in option B.
(D) Incorrect. This option is in inverted sentence structure. Converting it into regular structure, we get:
Circling the globe faster than Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg are included in the pioneer journalist Nellie Bly’s exploits.
We can see that the sentence has a singular subject “circling” and a plural verb “are”.
(E) Incorrect. Nellie Bly herself was the pioneer journalist. “The pioneer journalist’s exploits of Nellie Bly” doesn’t make any sense.
Hi Sir
Now, I have another platform to ask my doubts 🙂
In option C – is the verb-ing modifier “including” modifies the preceding noun instead of the previous clause, since there is no comma after the “journalist” and “including”?
Hi Tulika,
My analysis for option C was dependent on the presence of a comma before ‘including’. However, I just saw that there is no comma before ‘including’. Thus, I have changed the explanation above. Thank you for bringing this up!
– CJ
Hello. I just wanted to clarify whether modifiers could modify adjectives. They can’t,right? And why?
Adverbs are also modifiers. Adverbs can modify adjectives.
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