Q19 - Style manual: Archaic spellings

[bermudask8er7]

Hello,

What makes choice A incorrect?

Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The short answer is that the stimulus never tells us what should happen when an editor corrects the spelling of a quoted word and the word occurs only once. Instead the stimulus discusses what happens when such modernization occurs in more than one quotation. Since the stimulus doesn't discuss the sufficient condition of answer choice (A), then the stimulus doesn't address answer choice (A) at all.

Does that make sense? If you see support for answer choice (A) please let me know where!

Answer choice (D) though can be inferred from the claim that "if [archaic spellings and styles] occur frequently, the editor may modernize them."

[bermudask8er7]

Great explanation, thanks!

[mrudula_2005]

Isn't another reason why A is off because it doesn't specify if the quoted word is from an "older work" and because it doesn't specify if the spelling that is being corrected is an "archaic spelling" or a typographical error?

Which leads me to question why D is correct: I did not pick it because it never specified that the punctuation was archaic - sure it states that the punctuation is "directly quoted from an older work" but that doesn't mean it had to have been archaic - it could very well be punctuation that has stayed current from old times to new times (and hence with no applicability of the modernization principle). Without explicitly being told if the punctuation was archaic or not, how can we infer D? In a different question, I could see the test makers explicitly testing on this attention to detail - so why not in this question as well?

That's why I chose "C" as a better response - at least it specifies "an archaic spelling" - why does it go wrong? because it says "should" when all we know is that the editor "may"?

Thanks a lot!

[rmoncel]

Hey mrudula_2005:

I also picked C the first time around. Then, upon reviewing the test, I think we can rule it out because we are never told in the stimulus what happens "IF the spelling interferes with reader comprehension". We are told what happens IF the spelling does NOT interfere and we are also told what happens IF archaic spelling and punctuation occur frequently. But nothing on the situation presented in answer choice C.

Hope others can chime in to vet this answer...

Cheers!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Exactly right rmoncel!

Notice that 4 of the 5 answer choices are conditional relationships.

Something like

If A then B.

Well in order for one of those conditional relationships to be the correct answer the stimulus would need to discuss what happens when A occurs.

So for the same reason why answer choice (A) was eliminated in the discussion earlier, so too can we eliminate answer choice (C).

For answer choice (A) the stimulus never tells us what should happen when an editor corrects the spelling of a quoted word and the word occurs only once.

For answer choice (C) the stimulus never tells what should happen if the spelling interferes with reader comprehension.

Does that make sense mrudula_2005? Can you see how the stimulus never addresses the sufficient condition of answer choice (C)?

As far as the "archaic" vs. "older work" distinction goes that you're wondering about on answer choice (D), notice that the stimulus does actually use the phrase "older works." Also, notice that the answer choice states that the punctuation is going to be "modernized." That means that it isn't currently modern as your question suggested.

Does that help?

[mrudula_2005]

Amazing explanations! - thanks a lot you guys. I don't know how I missed that - it seems so obvious now that you've pointed it out to me! thanks again!

[LSAT-Chang]

Hey Matt!
What is wrong with (E)? I thought we could infer that from "or if similar modernizing has been done in more than one quotation, inserting a general statement in the preface." Is it because (E) says "an explanation should appear" and not a "general statement"???

[d.andrew.chen]

(E)'s sufficient clause (modernizing only one of several similar instances of quoted punc) is also not in the stimulus.

Read the sentence starting with "However" closely. The sufficient condition is one where there is similar modernizing in more than one quotation. The answer choice states that there are several instances where it happened, but only ONE is modernized. Thus, we do not have the sufficient clause needed to support (E)...even though the necessary clause matches up.

For the record, if you want to argue that the answer choice (A) refers to an archaic work, the explanation/note is still unsupported, because the correction is "infrequent." Obviously we do not know if it's interfering, so this doesn't quite get to invoking preservation.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The answer choice states that there are several instances where it happened, but only ONE is modernized. Thus, we do not have the sufficient clause needed to support (E)

That's exactly right. Instead of having similar modernizing in more than one place, we're getting dissimilar modernization, since the modernizing is not similarly applied to all cases.

Nice explanation d.andrew.chen!

[goriano]

Could someone please clarify the second sentence that starts with "However, if they occur frequently, the editor may modernize..."

Specifically, I'm wondering whether the clause from the first sentence "AND they do not interfere with a reader's comprehension" gets distributed to the second sentence. That is, should the second sentence be diagrammed as

(1) Frequently --> modernize w/ explanation

or

(2) Frequently AND does not interfere with reading comp --> modernize w/ explanation

[timmydoeslsat]

Good question. Do not distribute the reading comprehension to that statement.

It is telling us what happens if they occur frequently. It does not talk about reading comprehension like the first statement did.

I have read some of the remarks in this thread about this question.

This question is really testing sufficient and necessary conditions, which would make sense with the must be true question type.

Answer choice A does not distinguish between a modern work or an archaic work, so we cannot say that this statement must be true.

B) We know that obvious typos in modern works can be corrected without an explanation. We do not know if this must be true.

C) We have information regarding what to do when 2 things happen, ~frequent and ~intefere RC.

We know nothing about what happens when interfere RC.

Analogous situation:

~A and ~B ---> C

Do we know what happens if B? No! We do not even know what happens if ~B! We have to have both A and B to determine something.

D) We know what happens with archaic spelling and punctuation issues when they occur frequently ---> you can modernize them.

The aspect about reading comprehension is superfluous. The test writers could have stated this and it too would have been a must be true correct answer.

"An editor may modernize punctuation directly quoted from an older work if that punctuation occurs frequently and is written in Greek."

A ---> B
A and Z ---> B

You can replace Z with any variable, but as long as A requires B, we know that when an A is present, the B will be required.

[jamiejames]

here's my take on the question, I diagrammed out the important part as. (I apologize if the layout is not as good as the LSAT forum masters, I fear I am not as eloquent as they ) :

(Preserved) --> ~(frequent) and ~(interfere with comprehension)

A --> ~B and ~ C

contrapositive is:

(frequent) or (interferes with comprehension) = ~(Preserved)

B or C --> ~A

everything else talked about in this passage, to me, was redundant.

I ran through the choices and chose D because:

If the punctuation that occurs frequently from an older work interferes with readers comprehension and occurs frequently, then it should not be preserved, (B or C --> ~A) which is the contrapositive of the first paragraph.

[redcobra21]

Answer choice (D) though can be inferred from the claim that "if [archaic spellings and styles] occur frequently, the editor may modernize them."

Thanks for the great explanation Matt! Just a quick clarification question.

Does it matter that the answer choice says "if that punctuation occurs frequently AND INTERFERES WITH READER COMPREHENSION" while the quoted portion does not include "interferes with reader comprehension"? "Interferes with reader comprehension" only comes up in the first sentence of the stimulus, but it is on the wrong side of the conditional compared to (D).

Thanks!

[asafezrati]

I understand the general concept and why one answer is correct while the others are not, but it seems that my current method of solving this problem (sketching 4 logicals and then checking the answers one by one) takes way too much time. Is there a tip anyone can share regarding the overall approach to the question?

Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

A few quick answers/corrections:

- 3 posts ago
You symbolized the first sentence incorrectly. The "if" tells us the sufficient idea.

Infreq. and ~Interfere --> preserve archaic stuff

- 2 posts ago
It doesn't matter that the sufficient condition in (D) has an extra element. The sufficient condition is still enough to guarantee us "may modernize". As timmydoeslsat put it,

if you know A --> B
and I tell you,
A and Z is happening,
do you know if B is happening?

You do! Because the rule is that whenever A happens, B happens.

So a rule that says
Freq. --> may modernize
will get triggered any time Freq. happens.

- Last post
Unfortunately, there's not much of a trick. This question + answer choices are clearly testing conditional logic, so it's the best tool for the job. You just have to get really quick about setting up the initial conditionals and then reading answer choices to see whether they restate any of the ones we have.

The alternative is to do it through actual topical understanding.

Some people, particularly editors, could potentially read this paragraph NOT like a robot but like a normal human looking to come up with a reasonable set of standards for whether or not to preserve archaic spellings.

The first sentence really announces our general presumption: let's KEEP the older spellings, as long as they're not a big deal in terms of frequency/comprehension. The only time we ARE told to get rid of them is when they are frequent, and we should explain that we're modernizing them when we do. We can fix typos, though, whenevs, without warning people.

(A) it might be a typo the editor corrects, and those don't need to be explained.

(B) no, pretty sure we were supposed to EXPLAIN any modernizations (fixing a typo is NOT a modernization).

(C) no, pretty sure only Frequency was offered as a case where we WOULD modernize.

(D) Sounds reasonable. Double whammy: frequent AND confusing.

(E) This sounds backwards. The preface option was for when we modernized MORE than once.