Leonardo Da Vinci standing against Appositives -OG SC-88 !!

[rajkapoor]

This made-up question simulates OG 12th ed. SC-88 , in structure.
(in case this version is unclear to you, please refer to the original question to answer this issue)

Leonardo Da Vinci , who was a great painter and architect, produced a series of masterpieces both depicting religious themes and expressions of people, yet in many ways he stood apart from the other painters of his time.

Answer Choices
A)
B) Leonardo Da Vinci, the great painter and architect,produced a series of masterpieces that depcited both
C) Great Painter and architect Leonardo Da Vinci,who produced a series of masterpieces depicting
D) Great painter and architect Leonardo Da Vinci produced a series of masterpieces that depicted
E) Great painter and architect Leonardo Da Vinci produced a series of masterpieces depicting both

I chose the answer B but that is the wrong answer.
I am confused with why this choice was wrong and why the correct answer choice D makes sense.
i) In D , it seems that there are two characters in play... Great painter + architect Da Vinci ....(of course if we look at the complete sentence, we can figure the use of 'he' and thus these two refer to same person yet isnt this construction of "Great painter and architect Leo" ambigious compared to answer choice B? )

ii)I might be wrong on taking the route of parallelism by considering ",yet" as the parallel tag. It seemed that B is more parallel than D and felt answer choice B stood solid ground.

The official explaination talks about appositives introducing wordiness. To me ,that was news .. Please clarify

[aditya.ghamande]

Appositives mean the two nouns placed side by side and separated by comma...Do not unnecessarily use appositives when you have proper modifies as the one in D..

[rajkapoor]

Appositives mean the two nouns placed side by side and separated by comma...Do not unnecessarily use appositives when you have proper modifies as the one in D..

you are right about unnecessary use of appositives,but the call i had to make was whether "the great painter and architect" is essential or non-essential (and logically too, as he is being compared only to the painters of his time).
D choice makes the sentence concise but gives weight to Leonardo being great painter and an architect

Plus the sentence in D choice could have been interpreted as
"Great painter and architect Leonardo produced" - two different people ...
Just had one of those oops moment while writing this - now i realize why "Great painter and architect Leonardo" points to Leonardo only as these two noun phrases act as one unit.If the expression is interjected with some article as in "A great painter and an architect Leonardo",we would have two characters ..


The original argument still holds as to when do we consider appositives wordy ...
I thought that i had already made the sentence concise it by choosing B over A.
I am not fighting the OG explanation but trying to understand when to make the right call.

Instructors ,please explain. ..

[aditya.ghamande]

btw...from which og book is this q?
from og verbal review that was released along with og12?

[rajkapoor]

btw...from which og book is this q?
from og verbal review that was released along with og12?

OG 12th edition SC-88 / I have tried to keep the sentence structure the same as much as possible, though words used are diferent

[RonPurewal]

raj, try reading this post. it should settle the issue about the construction that opens the sentence.
post35618.html#p35618

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as for the parallelism, both (b) and (d) are fine; each of these has 2 parallel clauses.

[pawan_chitturu]

Request somebody to please explain why "D" is better than "B"

[RonPurewal]

Request somebody to please explain why "D" is better than "B"

in this particular knockoff version, choice (b) doesn't have any real errors.
in the original version, the corresponding choice (b) actually contained a parallelism error that was rectified in the correct answer; that parallelism error is the only true "error" in that choice. since this poster has not created a similar parallelism error in this problem, this new version effectively has two correct answers, (b) and (d).

of those two, (d) will be preferred by people who are versed in the stylistics of formal english writing, but that difference is way too subtle (and rhetorical, as opposed to grammatical) to be tested on the gmat, and thus is not appropriate for discussion here.

[samarpan.bschool]

E) Great painter and architect Leonardo Da Vinci produced a series of masterpieces depicting both

Hi Ron,

I dont see anything wrong with option E. Here 'depicting' (present participle) is acting as an adjective modifying masterpieces. Also the parallel structure - both X and Y - is intact. Is this also a correct option, along with B & D or am i missing something here?

Thanks
samarpan