Consolidated Writing Questions (Need help)

xthrillakillax
Thu, 31 May 2012 22:47:47 +0000

I don’t think a relative pronoun can have a verb antecedent. In any case, it makes more sense for “which” to refer to the techniques.
This is case of an illogical shift in person. The 3rd person is used in the independent clause while the 2nd person is used in the dependent clause. Rearranging the sentence is an easy way to spot the error. In theory, if you switch the order of dependent and independent clauses, the sentence should still make sense. If you do that with this sentence you get:




When you have have a tendency to complain about ailments that are largely imagined, a hypochondriac is.



Now the error becomes much more apparent.


Verb tenses aren’t always parallel and they don’t have to be. This sentence makes sense because it’s saying the paper was deteriorating even before it was found.
Both are correct but the latter choice is wordy and clunky (two "that"s in a row). When two sentences are both grammatically correct in the Improving Sentences section, pick the shorter one.
Inserting “for” wouldn’t make sense because the relative pronoun “whose” already implies possession.
I thought “for president” was right too. If this had been a Identifying Sentence Errors question, I would’ve gotten it wrong. Because it’s a IS question, I would have probably saw “elected” and chose that because it’s shorter and still grammatically correct.
Yes that would be correct. But CB thinks the shorter the sentence, the better, so in IS questions, go with the shorter answers as long as they don’t sacrifice correct grammar.
Refer to 7.