Beat the Gmat
tPowered by TestMagic
www.TestMagic.com www.sentencecorrection.com About this document
760 GMAT!!
These notes were compiled by Spiderman, a member of the TestMagic Forum and the Sentence Correction forum. The vast majority of these notes were compiled from the various postings of the TestMagic Forum members, including explanations made by Erin, but some notes were taken from other sources, including “Spidey’s” own notes. A large part of the document was copied from www.testmagic.com and retains the original HTML layout and format of the source.
Spidey ended up scoring 760 on the GMAT!! How’s that to motivate you to study, eh?? Erin (of TestMagic) and “Spidey” have agreed to share these notes in the hopes that they will help others reach their dream score.
Feel free to redistribute the document freely, but please honor the original copyrights and attributions.
Not/But vs. rather than
From: http://www.testmagic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213
The key here is to realize that not... but... is conjunction. We use conjunctions when we want to join things that are "linguistically equivalent." Help much? No, probably not.
How about some examples?
•
Pucci is not a dog but a cat.
•
Not Todd but Taka will be studying with us today.
•
I not was sad but happy to learn that Megumi was moving to Paris for abetter job.
You should notice that the words in bold are "linguistically equivalent," or, as we sayin class, "parallel."
Now compare one of these sentences if I try to use rather than:
-1–
Powered by TestMagic
www.TestMagic.com www.sentencecorrection.com Pucci is a cat rather than a dog.
Doesn 't this sentence sound crazy? It should; the meaning is all wrong.
Now, let 's look at a similar sentence, one in which rather than is okay:
I want a cat rather than a dog.
This sentence is okay because we are expressing a preference for one thing over another thing.
I need X, not Y = I need X but not Y = I need not Y but
www.TestMagic.com www.sentencecorrection.com About this document
760 GMAT!!
These notes were compiled by Spiderman, a member of the TestMagic Forum and the Sentence Correction forum. The vast majority of these notes were compiled from the various postings of the TestMagic Forum members, including explanations made by Erin, but some notes were taken from other sources, including “Spidey’s” own notes. A large part of the document was copied from www.testmagic.com and retains the original HTML layout and format of the source.
Spidey ended up scoring 760 on the GMAT!! How’s that to motivate you to study, eh?? Erin (of TestMagic) and “Spidey” have agreed to share these notes in the hopes that they will help others reach their dream score.
Feel free to redistribute the document freely, but please honor the original copyrights and attributions.
Not/But vs. rather than
From: http://www.testmagic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213
The key here is to realize that not... but... is conjunction. We use conjunctions when we want to join things that are "linguistically equivalent." Help much? No, probably not.
How about some examples?
•
Pucci is not a dog but a cat.
•
Not Todd but Taka will be studying with us today.
•
I not was sad but happy to learn that Megumi was moving to Paris for abetter job.
You should notice that the words in bold are "linguistically equivalent," or, as we sayin class, "parallel."
Now compare one of these sentences if I try to use rather than:
-1–
Powered by TestMagic
www.TestMagic.com www.sentencecorrection.com Pucci is a cat rather than a dog.
Doesn 't this sentence sound crazy? It should; the meaning is all wrong.
Now, let 's look at a similar sentence, one in which rather than is okay:
I want a cat rather than a dog.
This sentence is okay because we are expressing a preference for one thing over another thing.
I need X, not Y = I need X but not Y = I need not Y but
References: 1) Check out page 300 of Kaplan verbal workout for “one” and “you” and “your” usage. 2) Start from page 293 of Kaplan verbal workout – good info. 3) http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/072.html 4) Style manual. http://garbl.home.comcast.net/stylemanual/e.htm - 33 –