Patience Lovell Wright, whose traveling waxworks exhibit

[GMAT S]

Patience Lovell Wright, whose traveling waxworks exhibit preceded Madame Tuscan’s work by 30 year, became well known as much because of having an eccentric personality as for having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax.

(A)well known as much because of having an eccentric personality as for having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax
(B)well known as much for having an eccentric personality as for skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.
(C)well known as much because of her eccentric personality as she was for her skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.
(D)as well known for having an eccentric personality as having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax.
(E)as well known for her eccentric personality as for her skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.

Source: GMAT Prep

I was confused between B and E. Chose E but don't know the reason why B is wrong.

[RonPurewal]

choice b exhibits poor parallelism:
having an eccentric personality is placed in parallel with skilful wax renderings....

choice e exhibits proper parallelism, in that both of the parallel items are noun phrases (the principal nouns being personality and renderings).

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oh, and by the way, it's tussaud (not 'tuscan').

[rschunti]

What are errors in choices "A", "C" and "D". Thanks

[RonPurewal]

Patience Lovell Wright, whose traveling waxworks exhibit preceded Madame Tuscan’s work by 30 year, became well known as much because of having an eccentric personality as for having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax.

(A)well known as much because of having an eccentric personality as for having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax
(B)well known as much for having an eccentric personality as for skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.
(C)well known as much because of her eccentric personality as she was for her skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.
(D)as well known for having an eccentric personality as having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax.
(E)as well known for her eccentric personality as for her skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.

choice a: bad parallelism
because of... is not parallel to for...

choice c: extremely bad parallelism
- one part is a phrase (because of ...), and the other part is a complete clause (she was for her ...)
- same issue as choice a, because vs. for

choice d: bad parallelism
- you can't get rid of the 'for' in the second part (it should be '...as for having...')
- wordy (compare with the compact wording in choice e)

[gmatboss]

Sir i am a GMAT tutor from Delhi/India.
I beg to differ with your explanation.
"having" is a gerund as it is the object of the preposition
"for". The error in b) is that having is a non continuous verb and thus it cannot be used as a main verb to mean "possession".
Thus the sentence-I am having a Mercedes is erroneous. We must say I have a Mercedes.

choice b exhibits poor parallelism:
having an eccentric personality is placed in parallel with skilful wax renderings....

choice e exhibits proper parallelism, in that both of the parallel items are noun phrases (the principal nouns being personality and renderings).


--

oh, and by the way, it's tussaud (not 'tuscan').

[RonPurewal]

re: (b) vs. (e)

the operative question here is which of the two choices (b)(e) has BETTER PARALLELISM. there is no doubt that (e) has better parallelism than (b).

even if you consider that gerund to be a noun, it still isn't parallel to the other half of the construction.
if you changed it to
as much for having an eccentric personality as for making skillful wax renderings of popular public figures
then we could talk about it. but, as written now, it's clearly inferior to (e).

[manish1sinha]

choice b exhibits poor parallelism:
having an eccentric personality is placed in parallel with skilful wax renderings....

choice e exhibits proper parallelism, in that both of the parallel items are noun phrases (the principal nouns being personality and renderings).


--

oh, and by the way, it's tussaud (not 'tuscan').

Hi Ron,

Once again amazing explanation!!

you posted here:http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/the-number-of-plant-and-animal-species-t2559.html

"known as is used with nouns: al capone was known as a gangster rather than as a tax cheat, but he was ultimately imprisoned only on charges of tax evasion.

with verbs, you have to use 'known to infinitive' or 'known for gerund'. "

Can we use the above mentioned concept to eliminate wrong answer options?
I see that the correct answer option has a "known for+NOUN" construction, please help me to understand the right concept.

[RonPurewal]

I see that the correct answer option has a "known for+NOUN" construction, please help me to understand the right concept.

ah, ok, that's a completely different meaning. that just wasn't on the radar, at all, in the problem on that other thread.

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if you say "PERSON is known as X", then you are saying that the person actually IS "x".

al capone was known as a gangster --> in other words, you are actually saying that al capone WAS a gangster.

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if you say "PERSON is known for X", then you are saying that "x" is some thing upon which the person's reputation is built.

tony hawk was known for his daring skateboard tricks --> i.e., tony hawk built his reputation by doing a bunch of daring skateboard tricks.

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the meanings of these two constructions are so different that i don't think you'll ever see a split between them in a problem -- if one of them makes sense, the other will be ridiculous.

[pradeepchandy]

couple of questions

1. Can skillful modify wax? or is "skillful" modifying "wax renderings"


2. Does E change meaning compared to A
A means a cause and effect whereas E does not mean something so strong

[dvrsrikar]

Hello

On similar lines as to the previous post:

isn't "skillful wax renderings of popular public figures" what MGMAT might call "too concise"?
In "skillfully rendered popular public figures", skillfully is an adverb and modifies "rendered", right?

Thank you for answering!

[tim]

First, to the original poster, make sure you copy the text of the problem EXACTLY as it appears in the source or we may be unable to help you in the future. You got lucky here in that both of your mistakes were innocuous and not part of the underlined section..

couple of questions

1. Can skillful modify wax? or is "skillful" modifying "wax renderings"


2. Does E change meaning compared to A
A means a cause and effect whereas E does not mean something so strong

1. wax renderings
2. every single word you change, in any sentence ever, changes the meaning. please don't fall into the trap of assuming you have to adhere to the meaning of the original. not only is grammar far more important than meaning, but if the original sentence is wrong then you HAVE to change the meaning, even if only slightly..

Hello

On similar lines as to the previous post:

isn't "skillful wax renderings of popular public figures" what MGMAT might call "too concise"?
In "skillfully rendered popular public figures", skillfully is an adverb and modifies "rendered", right?

Thank you for answering!

first, no. there is no such thing as "too concise". if you go beyond perfectly concise, you don't get "too concise", you get "wrong". this sentence is not wrong. you are wanting to change the adjective to an adverb, and that's great and may even be an improvement, but that doesn't make the adjective wrong..

as to your second question, yes..

[s.ashwin.rao]

Hi,
I agree with E, but if re-read the whole sentence then would "became as well known" not be awkward? I have never a sentence with such a construction!

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

Hi,
I agree with E, but if re-read the whole sentence then would "became as well known" not be awkward? I have never a sentence with such a construction!

here are 110,000 of them:
http://www.google.com/search?client=saf ... 8&oe=UTF-8

the best way to interpret this construction -- as well as any other construction involving "well known" -- is to interpret "well known" (which is often, but not always, connected with a hyphen: well-known) as a single word that functions as an adjective.

in 1995 i became as tall as my brother ("tall" is an adjective)
in 1995 i became as well known as my brother ("well known" is an adjective)

[s.ashwin.rao]

Thanks a lot Ron. Your are truly great. I don't know about other superstars but you are GMAT superstar. Please bless me Ron :)

[tim]

he is a superstar indeed.. :)