Retail Sales Rose 8/10 of 1 Percent in August

Question: Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.

(A) that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of
(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double
(C) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled
(D) of personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubling that of
(E) of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of

“Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August” - is a GMAT sentence correction question. This question has been taken from the book “GMAC GMAT Official Guide Bundle 2022”. These types of questions contain grammatical errors in the underlined sentence and we have to choose the correct statement from the options. GMAT sentence correction is a part of GMAT verbal.

Answer: B

Explanation:

The given sentence correction question is tested by the given-below rules:

• Parallelism
• Comparison of two elements
• Modifiers

Now, within the given question, the statement is -

Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that non-public spending within the July-September quarter over doubled that of the 1.4 percent rate of growth in personal spending for the previous quarter.

(A) this is often INCORRECT for 2 reasons. First, it states that private spending within the July-September time frame already doubled - but we only have information about August to this point. Therefore, this does not make logical sense in terms of your time. Second, it uses the phrase "that of" bare for it to refer back to. There are already two items being compared, and they both use the phrase "personal spending." this might not be the right answer.
(B) this can be the right option. It uses the phrase "would over double," which is clearly a prediction about what is going to happen within the remainder of the quarter. There also don't seem to be any issues with pronouns here
(C) this feature is wrong for a pair of reasons. First, this selection also assumes that the non-public spending rate has already doubled, rather than predicting the speed for the remainder of the quarter. Second, the pronoun "it" doesn't have a transparent antecedent to refer back to - WHO doubled the spending rate? The sentence doesn't actually name anyone, so this "it" pronoun isn't used here.
(D) this is often INCORRECT for 2 reasons. First, by saying "more than doubling," the author is now saying the spending rate has already doubled, which we do not know if goes to be true or not. Second, the phrase "that of" isn't necessary - it is not referring back to anything. Both items being compared use the phrase "personal spending," so there is no need for any pronouns.
(E) While this selection uses the right "would over double" to point out a prediction, it's still INCORRECT. The phrase "that of" has no clear antecedent. The sentence is comparing personal spending in July-September to non-public spending within the previous quarter, and both use the phrase "personal spending," that the pronoun isn't necessary.

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