Question

In response to losing a significant part of its market share to a competitor, the soft drink company has cut costs by withholding executive bonuses, changed their advertising agency, and have redesigned the company logo.

• A. changed their advertising agency, and have
• B. changing their advertising agency, as well as
• C. has changed its advertising agency, and
• D. and changed its advertising agency, and has
• E. changed its advertising agency, and

Hint:

When you see a list of actions (items joined by "and"), check that all items are in the same grammatical form (e.g., all are "-ing" verbs, all are past tense verbs, all are infinitives). This is the principle of parallelism.

Answer 1

Answer: (E)

Step 1: Understanding the Concept:
This question tests parallelism and pronoun-antecedent agreement. Items in a list should be in the same grammatical form. Pronouns must agree in number with their antecedents.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
Pronoun Agreement: The subject of the sentence is "the soft drink company," which is a singular entity. The original sentence uses the plural pronoun "their" to refer to the company. This is incorrect. The singular pronoun "its" should be used. This eliminates (A) and (B).
Parallelism: The sentence lists three actions the company has taken: 1. has cut costs... 2. changed their advertising agency... 3. have redesigned the company logo. The first verb is "has cut." For the list to be parallel, the subsequent actions should be in the same form. The implied structure is "the company [has cut]..., [has changed]..., and [has redesigned]...". The "has" from the first item can govern the entire list. The correct parallel structure would be: "...has cut costs..., changed its advertising agency, and redesigned the logo." Let's check the options:

(A) Incorrect pronoun "their" and incorrect verb "have."
(B) Incorrect pronoun "their" and incorrect verb form "changing."
(C) "has changed... and" - this would lead to "... has changed its... and have redesigned..." which is not parallel.
(D) Awkwardly inserts "and" twice.
(E) "changed its advertising agency, and" - This fits perfectly into the parallel structure: "...the company has [1] cut costs..., [2] changed its advertising agency, and [3] redesigned the company logo." (The final verb "redesigned" is missing the incorrect "have"). This option corrects the pronoun and creates the most parallel and concise sentence.
Step 3: Final Answer:
The singular antecedent "company" requires the singular pronoun "its." The list of actions should be parallel. The structure "has cut..., changed..., and redesigned..." is the correct parallel form. Option (E) provides the necessary correction to achieve this.