Thelonious Monk, who was a Jazz Pianist and Composer, Produced a Body of Work both Rooted in the Stride-Piano Tradition of Willie (The Lion) Smith and Duke Ellington, Yet in Many ways he Stood Apart from the Mainstream Jazz Repertory.

Question: Thelonious Monk, who was a jazz pianist and composer, produced a body of work both rooted in the stride-piano tradition of Willie (The Lion) Smith and Duke Ellington, yet in many ways he stood apart from the mainstream jazz repertory.

(A) Thelonious Monk, who was a jazz pianist and composer, produced a body of work both rooted
(B) Thelonious Monk, the jazz pianist and composer, produced a body of work that was rooted both
(C) Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, who produced a body of work rooted
(D) Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk produced a body of work that was rooted
(E) Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk produced a body of work rooted both

“Thelonious Monk, who was a jazz pianist and composer, produced a body of work both rooted in the stride-piano tradition of Willie (The Lion) Smith and Duke Ellington, yet in many ways he stood apart from the mainstream jazz repertory.” - 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 2016’. This question checks Meaning, Parallelism, and Awkwardness /Redundancy rules. 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: D
Explanation: The given sentence correction question can be tested by the given-below rules:

1. Meaning
2. Parallelism
3. Awkwardness /Redundancy

(A) Incorrect.
In option A we need to see if it follows the parallelism rule. Using a verb after “both” needs the usage of another verb after “and”.
Both - rooted - (verb), and- Duke Ellington (noun)
So in case, both the verbs must be used before Wille Smith.
Here, we see that -Thelonious Monk produced a body of works rooted in the stride-piano tradition of both Willie Smith and Duke Ellington. Hence, we see “both” and “and” are succeeded by nouns. So, this option A has to be eliminated.

(B) Incorrect.
Option B breaks the rule of parallelism.
Rooted both

• in the stride-piano tradition of Willie (The Lion) Smith
• Duke Ellington

So, this option B has to be eliminated.

(C)Incorrect.
Option C states about the “who”, this is a relative clause. But there is no main verb in the given statement. Hence this option is not suitable.

(D) Correct.
In option D we can use it as a sentence that uses the rule for parallelism correctly. It also follows the grammatical structure. Hence option D is the correct answer.

(E)Option E breaks the rule of parallelism. So, this option E has to be eliminated.

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