<p>Hello, I've been working on acing the writing section, and I can't really figure out the rationale behind these Sentence Error ID questions and answers. Would really appreciate if any of you guys could help to explain why. Thanks!</p>
<p>First question is:
Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset is like the novelist Sir Walter Scott in her use of historical backgrounds, but unlike his books, she dwells on the psychological aspects of her characters.</p>
<p>The error in the sentence, according to the answer sheet was "his books", but I don't understand why. It doesn't seem like an ambiguous pronoun, because the nouns are clearly defined earlier, in that one person is already titled as "Sir", clearly defining him as male, and the "her" as referring to the Norwegian writer. This seems a little over the top, to me.</p>
<p>Second question:
The television has received many complaints about the clothing advertisements, which some viewers condemn to be tasteless.</p>
<p>The problem highlighted in the answer was "to be". This one is a bit more confusing with the tenses, and I'm not sure how to pinpoint the inconsistency that the answer is highlighting. If "to be" is in the wrong tense, what should the correction be?</p>
<p>First question is:
Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset is like the novelist Sir Walter Scott in her use of historical backgrounds, but unlike his books, she dwells on the psychological aspects of her characters.</p>
<p>The error in the sentence, according to the answer sheet was “his books”, but I don’t understand why. It doesn’t seem like an ambiguous pronoun, because the nouns are clearly defined earlier, in that one person is already titled as “Sir”, clearly defining him as male, and the “her” as referring to the Norwegian writer. This seems a little over the top, to me.</p>
<hr>
<p>“unlike him”</p>
<p>faulty comparison</p>
<p>Second question:
The television has received many complaints about the clothing advertisements, which some viewers condemn to be tasteless.</p>
<p>The problem highlighted in the answer was “to be”. This one is a bit more confusing with the tenses, and I’m not sure how to pinpoint the inconsistency that the answer is highlighting. If “to be” is in the wrong tense, what should the correction be?</p>
<p>Just to expand on the second one: look at the definition of “to condemn.” It has several similar, but slightly different meanings. In the excerpt, it’s being used to mean: to say, in a strong way, that something has a bad characteristic.</p>
<p>Among the other meanings is what a judge does, which might be coupled with “to be:” “The judge condemned the convicted murderer to be hanged by the neck until dead” (just to be dramatic about it).</p>
<p>The viewers aren’t taking an action that makes the ads tasteless; they’re just saying (strongly) that they are tasteless.</p>