Grammar and Usage: rule patterns for concord, voice, narration and prepositions
Grammar and Usage
The grammar questions are usually discrete: fill in the blank, correct the error, join or transform sentences, change voice or narration, supply the right preposition or phrasal verb. Marks come from rules, so revise rules by pattern rather than by ear.
High-yield rules
- Concord: one of + plural noun takes a singular verb (One of my friends is ...). Each, every, either, neither, everybody are singular. The number of is singular; a number of is plural.
- Correlatives: no sooner ... than, hardly/scarcely ... when, not only ... but also, so ... that, too ... to. Inversion follows no sooner and hardly: No sooner had he sat down than the bell rang.
- Voice: only transitive verbs passivise; keep the tense and make the new subject agree with the verb.
- Narration: backshift the tense, change pronouns to the reporter's viewpoint, and shift time and place words (now → then, tomorrow → the next day, here → there).
- Prepositions and phrasal verbs: learn in chunks - deprive of, insist on, comply with, put up with, look forward to (+ -ing).
Worked example
Correct: One of my friends are coming. Reasoning: the subject is one, not friends; the phrase of my friends is a modifier, so the verb must be singular: One of my friends is coming. The same test resolves Each of the boys was ... and Neither of the answers is ....
Traps
- Trusting what "sounds right" when a long phrase separates subject and verb.
- Keeping question word order in reported speech: He asked where I lived, not where did I live.
- Losing the object in the passive: They gave him a book → He was given a book.
- Using the wrong correlative pair: no sooner ... when is wrong.
- Changing the tense of a sentence that is already correct during transformation.