Three C's

[rajatvmittal]

HI I read about three 'c's.

But i have not come across any sentence in which concision is the only criterion basis which the correct answer can be chosen.

Can you please give any such examples.

Thanks
Rajat

[RonPurewal]

But i have not come across any sentence in which concision is the only criterion basis which the correct answer can be chosen.

No such animal.

Wordiness is not actually an error"”it's just a less desirable style of writing"”so it would be impossible to create an "incorrect" answer choice whose only issue is wordiness. (It wouldn't be incorrect!)

Here are some other thoughts:

* "Concision" is, essentially, a guessing method. You should think about it ONLY AFTER you have exhausted all your thoughts about things that might actually be correct vs. incorrect.

* You should never, ever, ever think of whether an individual answer choice is "concise". You should think only in relative terms.
In other words, you should not look at one sentence and try to decide whether it is "concise""”basically, that's a professional editor's job.
However, if you see two answer choices, with one clearly"”and needlessly"”much more "wordy" than the other, then you can keep the more concise one and eliminate the other one.
E.g., OG 13th #131, choices (d) and (e). (Can't reproduce the text here, but you should be able to see the split I'm talking about.)

[RonPurewal]

* Note the emphasis on "needlessly wordy". If a choice has more words for a good reason, then "concision" is a non-issue, and you should just think about right and wrong.
I.e., if a choice takes away words that actually have to be there"”e.g., little money and jobs vs. little money and few jobs"”then, no. (You can't use "little" for countable things, like jobs.)

[RonPurewal]

By the way, you may be wondering, "If wordiness isn't actually an error, then why is it a good guessing method?" In other words, since wordy sentences aren't inherently incorrect, how do you know there will be any correlation between (a) concise answers and (b) actual correct answers?

If you have that question in mind, it's a good question. (If you don't, you should"”it's a "critical reasoning" type of situation.)

The answer is this: GMAC doesn't create incorrect answers that are stylistically inferior to incorrect answers. The correct answers are also, fortunately, well-written sentences.
I've seen only one or two GMAC sentences with poor style"”e.g., one gmat prep problem about "men and women of science" comes to mind"”but, in those problems, all five choices were pretty awkward anyway. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

By the way, this is yet another reason to stay away from doing SC's from random third-party internet sources (just in case you didn't have enough reasons already...)
Many of those problems force you to face the choice between (a) a choice that's correct but horribly awkward, and (b) a choice that's stylistically better but wrong.
If that ever happens on the test, you'd obviously want to go with (a), but my point is that it's not going to happen on the test.