Logical reasoning PrepTest 133 · Section 2 · Question 19

Incorrect. This answer doesn't note whether the work being quoted is older or newer, so it's unclear if a note is needed. If it's a modern work, it wouldn't be.

Incorrect. If that archaic word is in a quote from an older work, then it can't be modernized without an explanation.

Incorrect. The second conditional talks about modernizing archaic spellings. But two issues. First, that rule doesn't say that an editor should update the spelling, just that they may. Second, that conditional is about the frequency of the appearance of that archaic spelling, not interference with a reader's comprehension. That's a part of the first conditional that talks about not updating the spelling, so this answer could be viewed as an illegal negation of that rule.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:
(1) not Occur frequently AND not Interfere with reader's understanding → Preserve old spelling and punctuation in quotations from older works
(2) Occur frequently → Modernize and insert specific note, or general note in the preface about multiple preservations
(3) Modern works → Fix obvious typos in quotations without a note

Answer Anticipation:
This argument has some very complicated conditionals, so let's work through each one.

The first statement has an AND sufficient condition and the conditional indicator word ("if") doesn't enter the equation until halfway through, but if you noted that conditional keyword and the AND, you should have ended up with something that means the same thing as what we have.

The second statement is a bit complex in its necessary condition. You could have split this into two statements, or you could have had a slightly different necessary condition. This is one of the cases where reading the passage and understanding it is easier than trying to "perfectly" represent it as a conditional. As long as your conditional was triggered by archaic spellings/punctuation occurring frequently, and it took into account that either a specific or general note would meet the necessary condition, you were good to go here. Conditional notation is a tool—use it to enhance your understanding, not get in the way of it.

Finally, the last statement starts with "On the other hand," so we need to figure out what that other hand is. By reading through the rest of the statement, we can see that it's talking about quotations from modern sources, whereas the first two conditionals are when the quotation is from an older work. So that conditional is triggered by a modern work, where obvious typos can be fixed without notation.

There's not a ton of overlap here. The closest we get is the sufficient condition of statement #2 showing up negated in the sufficient condition of statement #1. While we could take the contrapositive to form a potential chain, since the sufficient condition of statement #1 has two conditions (AND), and the second wouldn't have two necessary conditions to allow a chain to form, we're going to have to head to the answers without a specific anticipation, relying on our understanding of these three statements to get us to the correct one.

Answer Explanation:
This answer is supported by the second conditional. Note how it gets away with including the term from the first conditional—interference with reader comprehension. That second conditional has a single sufficient condition—frequent occurrence of the archaic punctuation. Once that has been established, it doesn't matter what else is established, as the conditional applies and we can conclude the necessary condition. So even though this answer provides more information than necessary to trigger the sufficient condition of statement #2, it still triggers that sufficient condition and thus allows us to conclude that an editor may update the punctuation, as this answer choice states.

Key Takeaway:
Conditional notation is a tool to help us understand language. Don't get so caught up in making your notation technically correct that you lose sight of the meaning, and if you can get something that lets you understand the statement without being technically correct, that's better than a technically correct diagram that you have trouble understanding.

Incorrect. This answer conflates the two possible approaches outlined in the necessary condition of the second conditional. There, it's noted that individual updates can be noted in the text, and repeated updates can be noted in the preface. In having an individual update noted in the preface, this answer messes up the details and can thus be eliminated.