Most of the Country’s Biggest Daily Newspapers had Lower Circulation in the Six Months from October 1995 through March 1996 than a Similar Period a Year Earlier.

Question: Most of the country’s biggest daily newspapers had lower circulation in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996 than a similar period a year earlier.

1. A similar period
2. A similar period’s
3. In a similar period
4. That in a similar period
5. That of a similar period

“Most of the country’s biggest daily newspapers had lower circulation in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996 than a similar period a year earlier.”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. This particular GMAT sentence correction topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide of GMAT Verbal Review, 2nd Edition, 2009’. This question checks Parallelism, Comparison of two elements and Modifiers. GMAT Sentence Correction questions comprise 11-16 questions to be completed within 65 minutes. Each Sentence Correction question contains a sentence with an underlined portion that includes 0-2 errors.

Answer: C
Explanation: The following concepts are used in the sentence:

1. Comparison
2. Awkwardness

Option A: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because this option incorrectly compares “in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996” to “a similar period a year earlier”. Always remember that comparisons can only be made between similar elements. Since these elements are not similar, the statement is not accurate. So, Option A is incorrect.

Option B: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it also incorrectly compares “in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996” to “a similar period a year earlier”, in which period is a possessive noun that refers to “circulation”. Always remember that a comparison can be made only between the elements that are similar in nature. Since the elements present in the sentence are not similar in nature, Option B is incorrect.

Option C: Correct
This option is correct because this option correctly compares “in the six months from October 1995 through March 1996” to “in a similar period a year earlier”. We know that comparisons can only be made between similar elements and these elements are similar in nature. Also, the option is free from any awkwardness or redundancy. So, Option C is correct.

Option D: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it needlessly uses the phrase “that in a similar period”. The phrase does not add much to the statement and looks awkward and redundant. We could have used some other phrase in its place that is more fitted to the statement. Since the statement is redundant, Option D is incorrect.

Option E: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it also needlessly uses the phrase “that of a similar period”. Just like Option E, it does not add much to the statement and does not contribute to the validity of the statement in any way. It merely looks awkward and redundant. So, Option E is incorrect.

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