Question 142

Choose the best way of writing the sentence.

A. The main problem with the notion of price discrimination is that it is not always a bad thing, but that it is the monopolist who has the power to decide who is charged what price.

B. The main problem with the notion of price discrimination is not that it is always a bad thing, it is the monopolist who has the power to decide who is charged what price.

C. The main problem with the notion of price discrimination is not that it is always a bad thing, but that it is the monopolist who has the power to decide who is charged what price.

D. The main problem with the notion of price discrimination is not it is always a bad thing, but that it is the monopolist who has the power to decide who is charged what price.

Solution

The idiom used in these sentences is “not __, but __”. So, the two phrases that follow ‘not’ and ‘but’ must be parallel.

In sentence A, the phrase after ‘but’ starts with the subject but the phrase after ‘not’ doesn’t. Hence, sentence A has a parallelism error. There are no other errors in sentence A. Option A is wrong.

All the options that have the same error can be eliminated. In sentence B, “not that it is” and “but it is” are not parallel. Hence, option B is wrong.

Similarly, option D is also wrong because the phrases “not it is” and “but that it is” are not parallel.

This error is corrected in option C. “Not that it is” and “but that it is” are parallel and hence option C is the correct answer.

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