Language Conventions: Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics
What the Language Conventions domain tests
This domain covers standard written English: subject-verb agreement, pronoun case and reference, verb tense and form, modifiers, parallelism, sentence boundaries (fragments, run-ons, comma splices), punctuation (commas, semicolons, colons, apostrophes, dashes), capitalization, and commonly confused words. Questions usually present a sentence with underlined portions or four versions of a sentence and ask for the standard edit.
Traps to watch for
- Interrupted agreement. In The box of old photographs was…, the verb agrees with box, not photographs. Prepositional phrases hide the real subject.
- Comma splices that sound fine. Two complete sentences joined by only a comma need a period, semicolon, or conjunction.
- Pronoun ambiguity. If it or they could refer to two nouns, the sentence needs a clearer referent.
- Dangling modifiers. An opening phrase must describe the subject that follows it. Walking to school, the rain began is wrong because the rain was not walking.
- Apostrophe confusion. Its is possessive; it's means it is. Students is plural; student's is possessive.
- Faulty parallelism. Items in a list or comparison must share grammatical form.
Rule of thumb: find the subject and verb first
Strip away interrupting phrases, locate the true subject, and check agreement and tense. Then check boundaries: does each group of words stand alone as a sentence?
Worked example
Each of the players need new cleats. The subject is Each, which is singular, so the verb should be needs: Each of the players needs new cleats. The phrase of the players is a distractor, not the subject.