Sentence Skills / Language Usage
What this section tests
Sentence Skills questions focus on the mechanics and usage that make writing correct and clear: punctuation, capitalization, word choice, commonly confused words, modifiers, parallel structure, and sentence combining.
Concepts to master
- Commas: separate items in a series, set off introductory phrases, and mark nonessential clauses. Do not use a comma between a subject and its verb or to join two full clauses alone.
- Apostrophes: possessives show ownership (the student's book, the students' books); it's means "it is," while its shows possession.
- Commonly confused words: their/there/they're, your/you're, affect (verb) versus effect (noun), then (time) versus than (comparison), fewer (countable) versus less (uncountable).
- Modifiers: a descriptive phrase must sit next to the word it describes. Walking to class, I saw the sign - not Walking to class, the sign was seen by me.
- Parallel structure: items in a list or comparison should share grammatical form: hiking, swimming, and biking, not hiking, swimming, and to bike.
- Sentence combining: join short sentences smoothly with conjunctions, relative pronouns, or semicolons to show the relationship between ideas.
Traps
- Comma splices: two full clauses joined only by a comma need a conjunction or semicolon.
- Misplaced modifiers: introductory phrases that seem to describe the wrong noun.
- Sound-alike errors: choosing a word that sounds right but is grammatically wrong.
- Overcorrection: adding punctuation where none is needed.
Rule of thumb
Read the sentence aloud and ask, for each punctuation mark, what job it is doing. If you cannot name the job, remove it. Then check that every modifier touches the word it describes.
Example: Neither the manager nor the employees was ready should be were ready, because with neither…nor the verb agrees with the nearer subject, employees.