USAGE OF BEING

by **SAI** Sat May 17, 2008 1:17 pm

HI GMAT CHAMPIONS:-),

IN Manhatten SC guide, under chapter 1 style -usage of Being should be avoided in GMAT. Do we need to eliminate the answer choice when being is added or is there any case where Being is correct.

THANKS
SAI

by **StaceyKoprince** Mon May 26, 2008 11:34 am

"Being" CAN be used correctly but it is almost always used incorrectly on the GMAT. That's why we said it "should be avoided" instead of saying it's outright wrong. In the past 12 years, I've seen maybe three instances of "being" used correctly - once on GMATPrep and twice (I think) on the old paper-and-pencil tests. I've seen a LOT of questions in 12 years, so I'm extremely skeptical when I see "being" in sentence. Eliminate everything you can based on everything else in the sentence and, if you have to guess between a sentence containing "being" and one without, choose the one without. (On the ones I've seen where "being" was right, it was pretty easy to eliminate the choices that did not use "being" for other reasons.)