Seldom More Than 40 Feet Wide and 12 Feet Deep, but It Ran 363 miles Across the Rugged Wilderness of Upstate New York

Question: Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie Canal connected the Hudson River at Albany to the Great Lakes at Buffalo, providing the port of New York City with a direct water link to the heartland of the North American Continent.

1. Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie canal connected
2. Seldom more than 40 feel wide and 12 feet deep but running 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, the Erie canal connected
3. It was more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, and ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, but the Erie canal, connecting
4. The Erie canal was seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep and it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, which connected
5. The Erie canal, seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep and it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York, connecting

“Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep, but it ran 363 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate New York”- 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: B

Explanation: The given sentence correction question can be tested by the given-below rules:

1. Modifiers
2. Pronouns
3. Parallelism

Option A: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it uses the modifier “Seldom more than 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep” and it sounds like a subject that can have the pronoun “it”. But the usage of “but” changes the construction and presents an independent clause in between and does not make it clear what the modifier describes. So, Option A is incorrect.

Option B: Correct
This option is correct because it corrects the mistake in Option A by removing the pronoun “it”.Now, the sentence begins with a modifier that provides us with two pieces of information about the Erie canal, which is the main subject of the sentence. So, Option B is correct.

Option C: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because the statement is incomplete. The subject “Erie canal” does not have a verb to complete the thought. Also, the use of the conjunction “but” indicates that there should be something more in the sentence. The subject “Erie canal” has two modifiers to describe it, but no verb to fully complete the sentence. So, Option C is incorrect.

Option D: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it uses the redundant pronoun “it”. The subject matter “Erie canal” is mentioned at the beginning of the sentence, so there is no need for the pronoun “it”. Also, the modifier “which connected….” seems to modify New York as it is placed right next to it. So, Option D is incorrect.

Option E: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because it has four modifiers but the placement of the subject matter “Erie Canal” is not correct in this option. Erie Canal has been placed at the beginning of the sentence and then there are four modifiers. These modifiers do not make sense as they are placed too far from the subject matter. So, Option E is incorrect.

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