Struggling with inference and the bounds of how far you can infer

GRE Verbal Problem Solving
2

ETS questions are very intentional about the limit within which you can infer.

In the last few sentences the information provided us is;

The title pages usually contained a list of earlier works by the author

This list would often be made last minute, without assent from the author, and mistakes were prone to happen

–

Keeping in mind the entire reason this passage is written is to discuss why attribution was difficult, these points are important.

From them we can infer what problems would likely occur.

They were written without the authors assent, were rushed, and had mistakes in them.

You have to ask, what types of mistakes could be possible, regarding attribution. This is entirety of the scope within which you can infer, because that’s essentially the only “open door” you’ve been given.

And there’s basically only two possibilities;

  1. Either the list is incomplete i.e does not contain all the authors works

  2. Or the list includes works that were not written by the author

And as we see, B correlates directly with number 2

I’d recommend trying to spot those statements that allow for inference before ever even reading what the options are. It’s a muscle you can build

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