Grammar, Sentence Structure, and Editing
Editing questions test whether you can spot and repair errors in agreement, tense, pronouns, modifiers, parallelism, punctuation and sentence boundaries. A sentence must have a subject and a finite verb and express a complete thought. Learn to recognise a fragment (missing subject or verb), a run-on (two independent clauses joined with no punctuation or conjunction) and a comma splice (two independent clauses joined only by a comma).
Check subject-verb agreement by locating the true subject, ignoring interrupting phrases: in 'The box of old letters was stored', the subject is box. Watch indefinite pronouns (everyone, each = singular; both, many = plural) and collective nouns. Keep tense consistent unless the meaning requires a shift. Ensure pronouns have one clear antecedent and agree in number. Dangling modifiers occur when the opening phrase does not describe the subject: 'Walking home, the rain started' should be 'Walking home, I was caught in the rain'. Keep parallel structure in lists: 'reading, writing and speaking', not 'reading, writing and to speak'.
Traps include fixing the wrong part of a sentence, choosing an option that is grammatical but changes the meaning, and missing errors in long sentences where the subject is far from the verb.
Rule of thumb: read the sentence without the interrupting phrase, then check the verb against the bare subject.
Worked example: 'Neither the students nor the teacher were informed.' With neither...nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject, teacher, so the correct form is was.