Read the sentence below to find out if there is any error in it. The error, if…

2025

Read the sentence below to find out if there is any error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence. The letter of that part is the answer. If there is no error the answer is (5). (Ignore errors in punctuation if any). Describing the prosecute version (A)/as "highly improbable", defence lawyer(B)/ Wills Mathews reminded the(C)/court the petitioner was discharged.(D)/ No error(E)

Answer: A. AConceptIn an error-spotting question, each marked segment is checked against the standard rules of grammar — subject–verb agreement, tense, preposition use,…

  1. A.

    A

  2. B.

    B

  3. C.

    C

  4. D.

    D

  5. E.

    E

Attempted by 40 students.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A

Concept

In an error-spotting question, each marked segment is checked against the standard rules of grammar — subject–verb agreement, tense, preposition use, and, crucially, correct word class (part of speech) for the syntactic role a word is playing. A segment is faulty only when a word of the wrong part of speech is forced into a role that needs a different one — e.g. a bare verb used where the sentence structurally needs a noun.

Applying it here

The segment marked (A) reads "Describing the prosecute version". Here "prosecute" is a bare verb ("to prosecute"), but it is being used to modify the noun "version" — a role that needs a noun, not a verb. The correct noun form is "prosecution", and since the version belongs to the prosecution, the possessive is needed: "the prosecution's version". This word-class mismatch is the error, and it sits entirely inside part (A).

Why the other parts are correct

  • "as \"highly improbable\", defence lawyer" — the participial phrase is correctly punctuated and the appositive naming the lawyer follows it cleanly; no word-form, agreement, or punctuation fault.

  • "Wills Mathews reminded the" — a singular proper-noun subject correctly takes the singular past-tense verb "reminded"; subject–verb agreement and tense both hold.

  • "court the petitioner was discharged." — the connector "that" is dropped before the reported clause ("reminded the court [that] the petitioner was discharged"); omitting "that" before a reported clause is a standard, accepted English construction, not an error.

  • "No error" cannot apply once a genuine fault has been located elsewhere in the sentence.

Cross-check

Replacing "prosecute" with "prosecution's" makes the whole sentence grammatically clean: "Describing the prosecution's version as 'highly improbable', defence lawyer Wills Mathews reminded the court the petitioner was discharged." No other substitution is needed anywhere else, confirming the fault was isolated to part (A).

Answer

The error lies in the part marked (A).

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