850. The winds that howl across the Great Plains not only blow away valuable topsoil, thereby reducing the potential crop yield of a tract of land, and also damage or destroy young plants.

(A) and also damage or destroy
(B) as well as damaging or destroying
(C) but they also cause damage or destroy
(D) but also damage or destroy
(E) but also causing damage or destroying

Solution:

OG Solution:
Choice D, the best answer, correctly employs the correlative construction not only x but also y, where x and y are grammatically parallel and where both x and y (damage and destroy) apply to young plants. Choices A, (not only ... and also), B (not only ... as well as), and C (not only ... but they also) violate the not only ... but also paradigm. Moreover, B contains terms (blow... damaging) that are not parallel. In C and E, damage is used not as a verb with young plants as its direct object but as a noun receiving the action of cause; consequently, these choices fail to state explicitly that the damage is done to young plants. E also violates parallelism (not only blow ... but also causing).

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