English Expression: Grammar, Usage, and Clear Writing
What this section tests
Sentence-level correctness - agreement, pronoun case, modification, parallelism, tense, idiom - plus clarity: concision, active voice, and logical comparison. Questions usually present a sentence with one underlined portion, or ask you to choose the best revision of a whole sentence.
Concepts to master
- Subject-verb agreement. Find the true subject and strip intervening phrases: The box of files is here. Compound subjects joined by and take a plural verb; along with, as well as, together with do not create a compound. Collective nouns (committee, team) are generally singular in American usage. Indefinite pronouns (each, everyone, neither) are singular; both, few, many are plural.
- Pronoun case. Subject vs. object forms; who/whom follows the same logic (substitute he/him). Use the possessive before a gerund: his leaving, not him leaving.
- Modification. An opening participial phrase must describe the noun that immediately follows it. Walking to work, the rain soaked me is dangling.
- Parallelism. Items in a list and both halves of a comparison must share grammatical form.
- Tense. Keep a consistent timeline; use past perfect for the earlier of two past events.
- Usage traps. affect (verb) vs. effect (noun); less (mass) vs. fewer (count); between (two) vs. among (three or more); comprise vs. compose.
Traps
Long appositive phrases hiding the subject; one of the few who have (plural verb); illogical comparisons (My salary is higher than my brother - needs my brother's); overcorrected whom in subject position; redundancy (return back, very unique).
Rule of thumb
Cover the commas and read only the core subject plus its verb. If they disagree in isolation, the sentence is wrong no matter how long the modifiers are.