* Since February, the Federal Reserve has raised its

[RonPurewal]

Thanks -- this really clears things up.

Key is the chain of events. For whatever reason, whenever I see things that are all in the same tenses, I get a little flustered.

He was tired so he didn't go to the gym. For whatever reason, I would try to put a "had been" in there to describe the chain of events -- "he had been tired so he didn't go to the gym".

that would work if you were talking about some earlier event with an impact on the situation.

e.g.,
Because Restaurant X's food had once made Jon sick, he did not accept the invitation to eat dinner there.

[GiladB589]

1. In option A, doesn't the comma need to be after the word 'and', so that the word won't be a part of the modifier?

i marked the modifier in orange, if we omit the modifier between the 2 commas, the sentence will make no sense without 'and' (run-on sentence)

Since February, the Federal Reserve has raised its short-term interest rate target five times, and because of the economy’s continued strength, analysts have been predicting for weeks that the target will be raised again in November.

2. I can see that B is wrong because it sounds wrong.
How can I eliminate it in a "professional" way?

thanks

[RonPurewal]

1. In option A, doesn't the comma need to be after the word 'and', so that the word won't be a part of the modifier?

three things:

1/
the correct answers are not wrong.

2/
the presence/absence of punctuation is not tested on this exam. if you're thinking about it, they've succeeded in distracting you from the things that are tested.

3/
the correct answers are not wrong.

[RonPurewal]

2. I can see that B is wrong because it sounds wrong.
How can I eliminate it in a "professional" way?

thanks

if "sounds" means "upon first looking at the sentence with my eyes, i had a VERY strong and VERY immediate intuition that it was wrong", then that's already the ideal situation, and you needn't bother justifying it.

when you have an immediate and strong intuition (and it's not wrong!), don't replace it with "rules". if you do, you'll actually get worse at this stuff.

--

if "sounds" actually means "sounds", on the other hand, then of course that method is worthless (or worse).

--

which is it?

[gbyhats]

Hi Dear Manhattan Instructors

I have a few questions:

--

1/ Is " economy continues strong" a legitimate sentence?

I see a post when Ron not seemed to be openly disagree ( I'm sorry... If my interpretation is wrong...I'm sorry for my bad English reading...) (green part)

1.you said that "continues strong doesn't make sense",however,i wonder whether i could place an adjective following the verb "continue" to indicate some state or condition?
for example--->
The flood of refugees continued unabated.
or
continue unchecked
and so on.

hmm. maybe. those are valid examples -- good point. however, "would" is still inappropriate.

However, in another post, Ron clearly disagree this expression (green part)

If we can't eliminate option C by the trick I mentioned above. How would you explain this situation in option C.

If you're asking how choice C can be eliminated, there are at least two ways:
* "Continues strong" is not a thing at all.
* "Continues" is in the present, so it's illogical for "predicted" to be in the past (implying that the analysts are no longer making the same predictions).

--

2/ In structure of "X due to Y", does X has to be noun?

In Tim's example, X is not a noun ( I'm sorry... If my interpretation is wrong...) (green part)

this is actually a compound sentence. your 2 is an independent clause on equal footing with what you've called the main sentence. also, i would recommend using "due to" rather than "because". i'm not sure how picky the GMAT is on this, but preferred use of "because" involves a clause rather than just a noun:

I carried an umbrella because it was raining

and

I carried an umbrella due to the rain

would be preferable to

I carried an umbrella because of the rain

However, in another post, Ron say, unequivocally that X has to be noun(green part)

'economy’s continued strength' does act like a noun phrase , yet the correct answer has 'because of' and not 'due to'

"economy's continued strength" is irrelevant, because that isn't what is modified by "due to".
(if you have "X due to Y" or "due to Y, X...", the point is that *X* has to be a noun.)

choice (d) mistakenly uses a "due to..." modifier to describe "analysts have been predicting...". that doesn't work.

--

2/ How do we know whether "Since February" a) only modifies "the Federal Reserve has raised..." or b) both modifies "the Federal Reserve has raised..." and "because of..., analysts have been predicting..." ?

Johanna, the connection between "predicted" and "would" is just fine. However, we start the sentence with "Since February." This phrase indicates an ongoing action -- as a result, we want to use the present perfect tense: "have been predicting for weeks." Furthermore, to use the past tense "predicted" would indicate that they are no longer making such a prediction -- again, not what we want here, logically.

In another word, if we see a sentence looks like this:

[Modifier] + [Comma] + [Clause 1] + [Clause 2]

For example:

-->This Friday, William said that he would be LA, and we were happy about it.

Does "This Friday" also modifies "we were happy about it"?

[RonPurewal]

Hi Dear Manhattan Instructors

I have a few questions:

--

1/ Is " economy continues strong" a legitimate sentence?

ok, this is a good question.

in those examples that ARE workable ("the flow continued unabated", etc.), those words (unabated, unchecked, etc.) are actually adverbs. they don't end with -ly, because ... well, they just don't (in the same way that "fast" is both an adjective and an adverb, whereas "quick" is purely an adjective).

needless to say, you will not have to know which words can be adverbs without ending in -ly. no way.

so, the answer is actually pretty simple: "...continues strong" doesn't work because "strong" can't be an adverb.

[RonPurewal]

2/ How do we know whether "Since February" a) only modifies "the Federal Reserve has raised..." or b) both modifies "the Federal Reserve has raised..." and "because of..., analysts have been predicting..." ?

1/
common sense (people made the predictions because of--i.e., after--the 5 increases that have already occurred)

2/
"analysts have been predicting" has its own timeframe modifier ("for weeks"). it can't be described both by "for weeks" and by "since february".

[RonPurewal]

oh, ha, you had two #2's.

2/ In structure of "X due to Y", does X has to be noun?

yes it does.

that quote from tim is, unfortunately, incorrect. if a sentence contains "xxxxxxx umbrella due to the rain", then, in formal language, it implies that the rain somehow made an umbrella happen.

(also, "i carried an umbrella because of the rain" is a perfectly respectable sentence.)

do you have a link for that citation? because, yeah, that needs to be edited.

[gbyhats]

Hi dear master Ron

Thank you very much for your replies to my recent posts -- some of them are pretty long

As always

It's always wonderful experience to read your posts -- reminds me of days I took my first English class, lots of inspiring knowledge that I want to absorb

--

needless to say, you will not have to know which words can be adverbs without ending in -ly. no way.

so, the answer is actually pretty simple: "...continues strong" doesn't work because "strong" can't be an adverb.

Gotcha!

"analysts have been predicting" has its own timeframe modifier ("for weeks"). it can't be described both by "for weeks" and by "since february".

I didn't notice the presense of "for weeks"!

oh, ha, you had two #2's.

Hahaha, that's hilarious!
That's why I almost never do well at math -- always mess up with numbers

that quote from tim is, unfortunately, incorrect. if a sentence contains "xxxxxxx umbrella due to the rain", then, in formal language, it implies that the rain somehow made an umbrella happen.

(also, "i carried an umbrella because of the rain" is a perfectly respectable sentence.)

do you have a link for that citation? because, yeah, that needs to be edited.

Sure! here is it:

[Link]
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... 37a#p65577

it's the last post in the second page in this thread

[RonPurewal]

ok, the misinformation has been redacted from that post. thanks.

[HemantR606]

1.you said that "continues strong doesn't make sense",however,i wonder whether i could place an adjective following the verb "continue" to indicate some state or condition?
for example--->
The flood of refugees continued unabated.
or
continue unchecked
and so on.

hmm. maybe. those are valid examples -- good point. however, "would" is still inappropriate.

2.i am still not quite clear about the use of will here.i have seen the link you gave us.
however , i think "would" will be better than "will",because in the sentence, "analysts predicted for weeks that the target blah blah" doesn't mean the thing predicted is sure to happen( more precisely,i mean the the word "predict").

please clarify me and thank you so much.
best.

this is not a correct understanding of "would". you don't use this kind of "would" when there is just any degree of uncertainty; it's a purposeful change of tense that's used to emphasize the idea that the event under discussion is certainly, or almost certainly, not going to happen.

in this case, the likelihood is high (after all, experts have been making the same prediction for weeks), so "would" is inappropriate.

Hi Ron,

I am still confused with usage of 'would'.

This is modified version of an excerpt from SC Q2 in OG12:

"...the doctors say that without a large amount of care the treatment might not last"

Doesn't the rule for 'will' apply for 'may'?
If it does, how is 'might' appropriate here? I can't see any purpose to show uncertainty in this sentence.

Please help.


Thanks,
Hemanth

[RonPurewal]

i don't have OG12 with me. nonetheless, i'll bet $500 that this 'might' IS NOT in the underlined part.
do i win?

[RonPurewal]

in any case, it's possible for either 'may' or 'might' to work here, depending on how (un)likely something seems to the speaker.

e.g.,

if i think that 'a sufficiently bad situation' has a non-negligible chance of actually happening, i'll write...
In a sufficiently bad situation, you may have to steal food to survive.

on the other hand, if i think the possibility is extremely remote (or nonexistent) then i'll write...
In a sufficiently bad situation, you might have to steal food to survive.

[HemantR606]

i don't have OG12 with me. nonetheless, i'll bet $500 that this 'might' IS NOT in the underlined part.
do i win?

Wow!
You win!
That's amazing!

This is not in the underlined part.

But your confidence on this stand is interesting. How were you so confident about that? What makes the difference between underlined and non underlined parts?


Thanks a lot in advance.

[RonPurewal]

the problems don't depend on little nuances.