If John receives the same grade in economics and Italian, and if he fails Russian, which one of the following must be...

ksharbo August 14, 2020

E Description

I'm confused by the sentence, "E is the only failing grade." I took that to mean that there would ONLY be one course in which he received an E, which is not the case. If they just meant "E is a failing grade", why did they include the word "only"? How should I have read that differently?

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shunhe August 14, 2020

Hi @ksharbo,

Thanks for the question! I think here, given that “E is the only failing grade” is in the information provided in the part before the rules, it’s pretty unlikely that we’re being told that John only gets an E in one grade. And “E is the only failing grade” makes sense; you have to put the word “only” in, because what if D’s also a failing grade? The point of that sentence is to tell us not only that E is a failing grade, but that there are also no other failing grades (so D is not a failing grade, for instance). If they wanted to say John only had one E, they’d say something more like “John only gets one failing grade, an E” or something like that.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.