Question Details

In the following questions, few sentences are given. Choose and mark the sentence which contains no grammatical or contextual error in it. If all the sentences are grammatically and contextually incorrect, mark "All are incorrect" option as the answer choice.

Options

The bank's annual profit have exceeded the targets set at the beginning of the fiscal year.

He refrained to speak about the merger until the official announcement was made.

A series of fraudulent transactions were detected by the internal audit team last quarter.

The customer complained that the ATM had dispensed less notes than the requested amount.

Notwithstanding the economic slowdown, the company managed to retain all its employees.

Show Answer

Correct Answer :

Option E

Notwithstanding the economic slowdown, the company managed to retain all its employees.

Solution :

To find the grammatically and contextually correct sentence, let us analyze each option step-by-step:

1. "The bank's annual profit have exceeded the targets set at the beginning of the fiscal year."
Error: Subject-verb agreement. The subject "profit" is singular, so it should take the singular verb "has" instead of the plural verb "have".
Corrected: "The bank's annual profit has exceeded..."

2. "He refrained to speak about the merger until the official announcement was made."
Error: Incorrect prepositional idiom. The verb "refrain" is followed by the preposition "from" and a gerund (verb-ing), not an infinitive ("to speak").
Corrected: "He refrained from speaking about the merger..."

3. "A series of fraudulent transactions were detected by the internal audit team last quarter."
Error: Subject-verb agreement. The subject of the sentence is the collective noun phrase "A series" (singular), not the plural noun "transactions". Therefore, it requires the singular verb "was" instead of "were".
Corrected: "A series of fraudulent transactions was detected..."

4. "The customer complained that the ATM had dispensed less notes than the requested amount."
Error: Incorrect adjective usage. "Notes" is a countable noun. We use "fewer" for countable nouns and "less" for uncountable nouns (like money).
Corrected: "...had dispensed fewer notes than..."

5. "Notwithstanding the economic slowdown, the company managed to retain all its employees."
This sentence is grammatically sound. "Notwithstanding" is used correctly as a preposition meaning "in spite of", and the subject-verb agreements and word choices are completely accurate.

Therefore, the only grammatically and contextually correct sentence is: "Notwithstanding the economic slowdown, the company managed to retain all its employees."