Question

SAT Grammar Question

Answer 1

Let's go over the options:
a. 'always' modifies the adjective 'sympathetic', so we want 'always sympathetic', rather than 'sympathetic always'. Even verbally, it makes more sense.
b. Don't you feel that the sentence should continue on? The sentence as it is with that is called a fragment, because it's not complete; there are literally parts missing - after 'since', there should be a complete clause with a subject, verb, and object. After since, we have 'news stories that were always sympathetic' ('that' describing the subject) but no verb or object. So this option is wrong.
c. This one is just stylistically awkward - 'sympathy to the poor' and the repetition of the possessive 'his'.
d. 'sympathetic' is largely never used with 'about', usually it's used with either 'to' or 'for'. This is idiomatically wrong. Also, we want to avoid the word 'being' as much as possible.
e. Idiomatically correct, makes sense. Everything else is incorrect.
Thus, e is the correct one.