Question

Today, the steel beams and girders of the city's skyscrapers are bolted together with special steel bolts and welded together. Compared with riveting, these connections are stronger, more quickly made, and require fewer men to accomplish.

Which choice is the best paraphrase of the text?

a
Steel beams and girders in today’s skyscrapers are constructed with specially made steel bolts. Then, they are welded together. These modern-day connections are put together more quickly and by fewer workers than the ones made in the past by riveting. They are also stronger.
b
Steel beams and girders in modern-day city skyscrapers have stronger connections and are put together more quickly and with fewer workers than connections formed by riveting.
c
Today, the steel beams and girders of the city's skyscrapers are bolted together with special steel bolts and welded together. Compared with riveting, these connections are stronger, more quickly made, and require fewer men to accomplish.
d
Today’s skyscrapers are built using steel bolts that are specially made for skyscraper construction. These bolts are welded together and create stronger connections than those made by riveting.

Answer 1

D

Step-by-step explanation:

A paraphrase is simply putting the passage into your own words.

First off, eliminate C because that's literally the same thing as the given - which means it's not a paraphrase but an actual quotation.

Now, usually paraphrases are shorter than the original. We might be able to eliminate A from that. Reading A, we see that the sentences are unnecessarily choppy, and it basically reads the same thing as the given except that A broke up some long sentences into short ones. Eliminate A.

We are now left with B and D. Read B. Grammatically, it's a run-on sentence, and you'll see that towards the end of the sentence, it doesn't really make sense: "...and with fewer workers than connections formed by riveting". This makes it sound like the workers are formed by riveting, which obviously is wrong and changes the meaning of the original sentence. So, eliminate B.

Thus, D is the correct answer because it runs smoothly and maintains the same major ideas as the original paragraph.

Hope this helps!