Is this sentence correct

[PrashantS209]

Put bluntly, those who do well at the zhongkao have a shot at becoming doctors, bank managers, government officials or teachers.

(a) Here Put bluntly does not correctly modify those who do well at the zhongkao. Isn’t this incorrect sentence for this reason?

It looks like from my practice so far that having extra punctuation do not automatically make a question incorrect but a lack of one when required makes it incorrect. Would this sentence be incorrect because there is no comma before “or teachers”?



[Source: The Economist: https://www.economist.com/china/2020/03 ... nese-teens]

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Following on from my previous response, be aware that GMAT Sentence Correction has a higher level of precision than most written publications. In response to your questions:
-The modifier 'put bluntly' is fine here; it modifies the clause that comes after it.
-Yes, I think GMAT would put a comma before the 'or'; this is akin to the Oxford comma. However, it's not wrong to omit it, and comma usage isn't tested on GMAT as it's rather subjective, controversial, and prone to stylistic differences.

[PrashantS209]

Thanks so much Sage.

Isn’t "Put bluntly” an opening modifier and hence should modify the ‘subject’ of the of the next clause as described here https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/gmat-grammar-biweekly-opening-modifiers/ ?

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

The rule that opening modifiers modify the noun that follows is a good one to memorize, as it applies to the vast majority of GMAT problems and offers some quick easy wins. However, it's a slight simplification of the grammar involved. Actually, what we call "opening modifiers" are many different kinds of modifiers: participle modifiers, appositives, and other types whose name I don't know. Some of them are noun modifiers, and some are adverbial modifiers. However, going into too much detail is unnecessary for GMAT, and may be counterproductive as you might get confused. So I encourage you to think 'opening modifiers almost always modify the noun that follows, but I might see a few adverbial modifiers too'.

In any case, the phrase 'put bluntly' is more like the style of spoken English, and I'm pretty sure you won't see such a construction on a GMAT problem.