Writing and Grammar
This domain checks whether you can identify and correct errors in standard written English: subject-verb agreement, tense consistency, pronoun reference, modifiers, parallelism, articles, prepositions, and punctuation. Questions typically present a sentence with one underlined segment or ask you to choose the best revision.
Core rules
- Agreement: the verb agrees with the head noun, not the nearest noun. In 'One of the officers who was on duty...', the subject is 'One', so 'was' is correct.
- Modifiers: a participial phrase at the start of a sentence must describe the grammatical subject. 'Walking to the station, the rain soaked him' is wrong; 'Walking to the station, he was soaked by the rain' is right.
- Parallelism: items in a list or comparison must share grammatical form: 'to file, to verify, and to report', not 'to file, verifying, and reports'.
- Tense: keep the timeline coherent; use past perfect only for an earlier past action.
Worked example
Sentence: 'The inspector, along with two constables, were asked to submit the report.' Reasoning: the subject is 'The inspector'; 'along with two constables' is a parenthetical phrase and does not change the number. The verb should be singular: 'was asked'. The comma pair is correctly used to set off the phrase.
Traps
- Letting a phrase between subject and verb control agreement ('along with', 'as well as', 'including').
- Misreading 'none', 'each', 'everyone' as plural in formal writing; they take singular verbs.
- Dangling modifiers created by passive voice.
- Punctuating a compound sentence with only a comma (comma splice).
For revision questions, test each option against the whole sentence, not just the underlined part.