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Remarkable breakthroughs in gene research may lead to dramatic changes in medical [treatment, where it may be possible to create] drugs tailored to a patient's genetic makeup.</li>
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<p>Remarkable breakthroughs in gene research may lead to dramatic changes in medical [treatment by making it possible to create] drugs tailored to a patient's genetic makeup.</p>
<p>Why is the first one wrong? Does "where" have to refer to a place? </p>
<p>[Never having seen] anything like this before, we thought we were looking at giant sculptures, not buildings</p>
<p>[Never seeing] anything like this before, we thought we were looking at giant sculptures, not buildings</p>
<p>2nd one is wrong. I got this by ear but I was wondering how these things work grammatically... what are the rules for these tenses? Whatever tense "never having seen" is must go with a verb in a past tense (thought)</p>
<p>The Roman poet Virgil is highly esteemed today for his epic poem, the Aeneid, yet on his deathbed he himself sought to prevent its publication on the grounds [of not being[ sufficiently published</p>
<p>It sounded weird, but why exactly is "of not being" wrong?</p>
Yes, pretty much. The second one is right because the word “by” tells you how breakthroughs in gene research may lead to changes in medical treatment. Here is an example of “where”:
I went to the park, where there were trees, benches, fountains, and a playground.
Most of the time you don’t really use it any other way than to talk about a place.
The first one uses the present perfect tense. The second one uses the simple present tense. The present perfect tense tells you something about the present state of things by referring to the past. For example, if you say I have done my homework, you are saying that you did your homework in the past and, in the present, you are acknowledging that you did your homework in the past. In other words, you are saying that you are in the state of having no more homework to do (since you have finished it), and now you can go to sleep or play games or something like that: I have done my homework, so now I can play games all night. (Of course you can also say I did my homework, so now I can play games all night, which is also correct.)</p>
<p>It makes sense to say I have never seen anything like this before, so we think we are looking at giant sculptures, not buildings because you are saying that, in the present, looking back to the past, you acknowledge that you never saw anything like that in your life. (Similarly, if you say I have never eaten asparagus before, you are saying you never ate it in your life.) So it’s understandable that you think those things in front of you are giant sculptures as opposed to buildings.</p>
<p>It does not make sense to say I never see something like this, so we think we are looking at giant sculptures, not buildings, because the simple present tense is just telling you that you never see it in the present, not that you have never seen it in the past leading up to the present. </p>
<p>So the same thing goes for participial phrases: You would say Never having seen it before, I don’t know what it is, but you wouldn’t say Never seeing it before, I don’t know what it is.</p>
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“needs not” would be wrong. Just think of “need not” as “don’t need to” (or “doesn’t need to” depending on whether the subject is singular). For example, The student need not cheat to do well in the class means The student does not need to cheat to do well in the class. It’s hard to explain grammatically, so . . . just memorize it.
I remember this question, and the last word of the sentence is “polished,” not “published.”</p>
<p>“on the grounds of not being sufficiently polished” is both awkward and (kind of) ambiguous. We don’t know what was “not being sufficiently polished” (even though we know obviously that it is the poem). In other words, we don’t know right away what or who should have been polished. This hesitation to mention the poem again makes the sentence awkward. The sentence means to say that Virgil wanted his poem to be sufficiently polished (“polished” means “perfected,” “made perfect”). In other words he wanted it to be perfect before it was published.</p>
<p>So the correction would be “on the grounds that it was not sufficiently polished,” where “it” refers to the poem (even though there are other singular nouns in the sentence, it is not ambiguous because we know from context and meaning and logic that “it” refers to the poem).</p>
<p>If the sentence sounded weird to you, that should be good enough. Just know that “on the grounds that” is a much more common phrase than “on the grounds of.”</p>
<p>CrazyBandit, you are amazing. Thanks. Lol, the last one only sounded weird in retrospect. At the time it seemed okay. Hope to get 800 W in june… going for the classic 750CR/800/800 lol</p>