Tough choice

[Shib]

Source:1000 SC

Although it was expected that workers under forty would show hostility to the plan, the research report indicates that both younger and the older people approve of governmental appropriations for Social Security.


(A) younger and the older people

(B) younger people and the older

(C) the younger and the older people

(D) younger and older people

(E) people who are younger and those who are older



I chose C but the answer is D.Can you please explain.Also I find this question gramatically incorrect for all the answer choices.Why "younger and older people" instead of "young and old". "younger and older" w.r.t. whom?

[mridul12]

Although I am not very good at Sentence correction, here is my 2 cent for the reason to pick D.

I think the correct answer D is due to correct usage of idiom

[b]both X and Y .[/b]


Any other comments from both Instructors and Students will be helpful.

[dbernst]

D is the best answer, but not for idiomatic reasons. Choices C and D both correctly use the idiomatic "both X and Y"; however, choice C is awkward and unclear as it seems to refer to a particular group of younger and older people by using the definite article "the." D, the better of the two, correctly refers to younger people and older people in general.

-dan

[guest]

D is the best answer, but not for idiomatic reasons. Choices C and D both correctly use the idiomatic "both X and Y"; however, choice C is awkward and unclear as it seems to refer to a particular group of younger and older people by using the definite article "the." D, the better of the two, correctly refers to younger people and older people in general.

-dan

Dan,

Could the worker be your particular group?

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

D is the best answer, but not for idiomatic reasons. Choices C and D both correctly use the idiomatic "both X and Y"; however, choice C is awkward and unclear as it seems to refer to a particular group of younger and older people by using the definite article "the." D, the better of the two, correctly refers to younger people and older people in general.

-dan

Dan,

Could the worker be your particular group?

Thanks

Nope. If the workers were a particular group under discussion, then the first part of the original, non-underlined part would have to say 'THE workers under forty', and it doesn't. The fact that it just said 'workers under forty' indicates that the writer does not treat the research report as targeted to a specified group of workers.

[DCE]

Hi

Somewhere this question got lost in all the discussion

Why "younger and older people" instead of "young and old"?

Thanks
DCE

[RonPurewal]

Hi

Somewhere this question got lost in all the discussion

Why "younger and older people" instead of "young and old"?

Thanks
DCE

i think your (implicit) question is something along the following lines:
"younger and older seem to suggest a comparison. so where's 'than' and the other half of the comparison?"

answer:
in standard english, it's acceptable to use "younger" and "older" by themselves to refer to different demographics of people.
call this an idiom if you want; it's just one of those annoying things you have to memorize. (an unrelated but similar phenomenon is the idiomatic phrase "grow up", meaning "to come of age". in other contexts, such as increasing numbers, grow + up would be redundant, but that is an idiomatic phrase.)

in any case, it goes without saying that, on this problem, you simply don't have to worry about this issue, since the same words (younger and older) appear in all five of the answer choices.