Which of the following alternatives to the portion in the brackets would not be acceptable?

the county cleared this [path and paved] it with packed gravel, so they would have a peaceful place to hike and bike.

a• path, paving
b• path and then paved
c• path before paving
d• path paved

D• path, paving

Explanation:

To find the unacceptable alternative, let’s first figure out the meaning of the original sentence. Two things happened: first the county cleared the path, and then the county paved it. So any answer choices that express this sequence of events would fit the sentence, and thus not be the "wrong" answer that we are looking for here. Answers A, B, and C all express the same idea in slightly different ways, creating perfectly grammatical phrases.

Now let’s see what happens when we plug in answer J. We get this weird sentence:

“The county cleared this path paved it with packed gravel…”

This is clearly a run-on sentence, so answer J is our odd man out.

Hope this helps!