Practice GMAT Sentence Correction Question

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With the advent of YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr, many savvy political consultants undertook revolutionary micro-targeting and get-out-the-vote techniques that enabled political candidates with cash-strapped budgets to be able to reach numerous likely voters and succeed in raising large numbers of money from enthusiastic and committed supporters in a short period of time.
Correct Answer: D

(1) The sentence must be constructed such that corresponding consequences of an action are parallel. Specifically, the sentence should read enabled political candidates with cash-strapped budgets to x and y where x and y are parallel.

(2) The phrase to be able to z is redundant and should be replaced by to z

(3) The phrase numbers of money should be amounts of money since number is only used when the object in question can be counted and money cannot be counted (i.e., you do not say 1 money, 2 money, 3 money). Note: By comparison, dollars can be counted (i.e., you would say 1 dollar, 2 dollars, 3 dollars) and as a result, we would say: the number of dollars.

  1. the phrase to be able to reach is redundant and can be shortened as follows: to reach; large numbers of money is not grammatically correct since money itself cannot be counted and, as a result, amount should be used instead
  2. the phrase to reach...and be successful is not parallel
  3. this sentence is set up such that succeeding modifies reaching voters instead of being a separate action on its own
  4. the phrase is parallel (i.e., to reach...[to] succeed); to be able to reach is replaced by the shorter to reach
  5. the phrase to be able to reach is redundant and should be replaced by to reach

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