Collegeboard's position on gerunds vs nouns

<p>A PSAT question went like "to prevent its being passed in the House"</p>

<p>I would think that "passage" is better in this case, but the answer is no error. But I remember seeing other cases where using the gerund form a verb where a noun form exists is an error.</p>

<p>Basically when a gerund that can be replaced by a noun is underlined, is that an error or no?</p>

<p>There’s nothing grammatically incorrect about that sentence. Sometimes in the sentence improvement section you’ll see answer choices that have gerunds in them, often passive (i.e. have “being ___ed,” and those are usually incorrect because they’re wordy. Generally, though, you’ll know that those aren’t the right answers because a different one is better; the College Board doesn’t usually put an answer that is incorrect for as subjective a reason as wordiness without putting another answer (the correct one) that is clearly better as another choice. If any of that made any sense…</p>