Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “As you know that the ignorant are easily duped”, has an error?

Correct — B, (b) that the ignorant.

The fault is the word ‘that’, and it is a fault of one conjunction too many. ‘As’ at the head of the sentence is already a subordinating conjunction: ‘As you know…’ means ‘since you are aware’, and it marks the clause it introduces as the subordinate one. A second subordinator, ‘that’, is then attached to the clause that follows, so every clause in the sentence has been made dependent and there is no main clause left for them to depend on. The sentence begins, subordinates twice, and never arrives.

Either conjunction is correct on its own, and English offers two repairs. Keep ‘as’ and drop ‘that’, punctuating the comment as a parenthesis — ‘As you know, the ignorant are easily duped’. Or keep ‘that’ and drop ‘as’, making ‘you know’ the main clause — ‘You know that the ignorant are easily duped’. Both say the same thing; what cannot stand is the two together.

This is the double-connective error, and it is the single most tested construction in Indian error-spotting sets. Its other forms are the same mistake wearing different clothes: ‘Although he was tired, but he finished the work’, ‘Because it was late, so we left’, ‘Unless you do not pay, the licence will lapse’. English pairs one connective with one link. A candidate who learns to look for a second connective in a sentence that has already used one will find a large share of the errors in this kind of item without analysing anything else.

The rest of the sentence is sound, and this is worth checking rather than assuming, because ‘the ignorant are’ looks like a subject-verb error to an eye trained on singular nouns and is not one.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)As you know — ‘As you know’ is unimpeachable in itself. ‘As’ is being used in its causal or concessive sense, ‘since’ or ‘as you are aware’, and a clause of this kind is a standard way of opening a sentence — as you know, as you are aware, as stated above, as the record shows. Nothing in these three words is wrong; the error appears only when the following clause is subordinated a second time. This option collects the candidate who has correctly sensed that something is wrong at the start of the sentence but has marked the part before the fault instead of the part that carries it.
• (c)are easily duped — ‘Are easily duped’ is correct, and it is the part most often wrongly marked here. ‘The ignorant’ is the definite article placed before an adjective to make a plural class noun — the poor, the rich, the blind, the elderly, the unemployed, the accused — and such a subject takes a plural verb: the poor are, the rich are, the ignorant are. ‘Is’ would have been the error. The verb itself is also right: to dupe is to deceive or trick someone, and the passive ‘are duped’ with the adverb ‘easily’ before the participle is ordinary word order.
• (d)No error — ‘No error’ cannot be taken, because the sentence does contain one: the conjunction ‘that’ in the second part leaves the sentence with two subordinate clauses and no main clause. On an item of this kind the escape option is worth choosing only after each of the three parts has been read separately and cleared, and here the second part fails that test. A sentence can read smoothly and still be ungrammatical — this one passes the ear easily, which is precisely why the setters chose it.

Two rules decide this question, and both are worth holding beyond it.

The first is one link, one connective. Every subordinate clause in English is attached to its main clause by exactly one subordinating conjunction, and every pair of coordinate clauses by exactly one coordinating conjunction. Doubling them produces the commonest error in Indian English writing: although with but, though with yet, because with so, as with that, since with therefore, unless with not. In each pair the two words are trying to do the same job at the same joint. Correcting the sentence always means deleting one of them, never rearranging both.

The second is the definite article with an adjective. ‘The’ plus an adjective names the whole class of people who have that quality — the ignorant, the poor, the rich, the blind, the young, the deceased, the accused — and the phrase is plural, taking a plural verb and the pronoun ‘they’. It is not a singular noun and it is not a collective noun with a choice of verb: the poor are, not the poor is. A second use of the same construction, with abstract force and a singular verb, exists in some fixed phrases such as ‘the sublime’ and ‘the unknown’, and it is that use which tempts a candidate into marking the verb here.

Key facts

• ‘As’ used to mean ‘since’ is itself a subordinating conjunction, so a following ‘that’ subordinates the same material twice and leaves the sentence without a main clause.
• The sentence is correct either as ‘As you know, the ignorant are easily duped’ or as ‘You know that the ignorant are easily duped’ — one connective, not two.
• The double-connective error has a fixed set of forms: although with but, though with yet, because with so, since with therefore, unless with a second negative.
• ‘The’ before an adjective makes a plural class noun — the ignorant, the poor, the rich, the accused — and it takes a plural verb, so ‘the ignorant are’ is correct.
• To ‘dupe’ is to deceive or trick; the passive ‘are easily duped’ places the adverb before the participle in ordinary English word order.
• In this booklet the whole sentence is quoted in the stem and its three parts are reprinted as options (a) to (c), with (d) ‘No error’; nothing in Part A is underlined.

Common traps

• Marking the part that made the sentence feel wrong rather than the part that carries the fault; here the discomfort starts in (a) and the error sits in (b).
• Marking ‘are easily duped’ because ‘the ignorant’ looks singular. A class noun formed with ‘the’ plus an adjective is plural.
• Taking ‘No error’ because the sentence reads smoothly. A doubled connective almost always sounds acceptable, which is why it is set.
• Assuming the underlined-segment layout used in some other papers. This booklet quotes the whole sentence and reprints its parts as options.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “Although he was tired, but he completed the whole report”, has an error?

  • (a)Although he was tired,
  • (b)but he completed
  • (c)the whole report
  • (d)No error

  Answer(b) but he completed — ‘although’ has already made the first clause subordinate, so the coordinating ‘but’ is one connective too many; the sentence is correct as ‘Although he was tired, he completed the whole report’.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following parts of the sentence, “The poor is often blamed for a condition they did not create”, has an error?

  • (a)The poor is often blamed
  • (b)for a condition
  • (c)they did not create
  • (d)No error

  Answer(a) The poor is often blamed — ‘the poor’ is a plural class noun formed from ‘the’ plus an adjective, so the verb must be plural: ‘the poor are often blamed’. The pronoun ‘they’ in the third part confirms the plural reading.