<p>29.
Despite<a href="A">/U</a> its cultural importance, the Daily Gazette lost<a href="B">/U</a> 70 percent of its subscribers since 1920 and, by 1955, was losing<a href="C">/U</a> as much as<a href="D">/U</a> $200,000 a year. No error<a href="E">/U</a></p>
<p>The correct answer is B --- this was a "level 5" sentence error question from the January 2006 SAT test. Why is lost the error?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>It should be had lost</p>
<p>Hard, hard question! It's actually quite awkward the way it's written, even with the correction. The grammar is complicated, but you can guess the right answer by stripping the clauses down to their essentials:</p>
<p>The Gazette has lost(B) subscribers since 1920;
by 1955, it was losing(C) $200,000 per year.</p>
<p>If you want the full explanation: the first part, (B) should be "has lost" [past perfect=have or has + past participle], because it describes an action in the past that continues into the future.</p>
<p>The second part is actually correct, even though it sounds a little odd. "Was losing" is a correct use of past progressive, a tense that can convey a continuous or ongoing action in the past. </p>
<p>Unless you're a real grammar geek, it's impossible to memorize all the uses of every tense. But if you break the clauses down, you have a fighting chance.</p>
<p>oops, yeah, you're right, has lost, not had lost</p>
<p>actually, "has lost" is the present perfect, not the past perfect. not that it matters for the SAT, but just to clear up the issue.</p>
<p>verb tense errors like this are very common on the SAT writing section. whenever you see different verb tenses/aspects in a question, be very, very suspicious of them.</p>
<p>how do you know that (b) is the problem here (as opposed to (c))? when you have a phrase with "since," you need a verb phrase either in the progressive aspect or in the perfective aspect. (b) is in neither. further, since you have a specific amount for the loss (70%), the losing must have already finished; because that's the case, you'll need an expression in the perfective aspect--if we know how much was lost, then the losing must be over.</p>
<p>luckily, we don't have to answer the question of whether the SAT would prefer "has lost" or "had lost," since either expression could complete the sentence in an acceptable way. if i had to guess, i'd say they had "had lost" in mind, since all of the time expressions in the sentence are in the past, and the SAT has a stupid rule about mixing tenses.</p>