Language Conventions and Grammar
Language Conventions and Grammar tests your control of standard edited English: sentence boundaries, agreement, pronoun reference, tense consistency, modifier placement, punctuation, and parallelism. Questions often ask you to choose the revision that is clearest and most grammatical, not merely the one that sounds formal.
Core rules
- Match subjects and verbs across interrupting phrases: “The box of letters was,” not “were.”
- Make pronouns refer to one clear antecedent; avoid ambiguous “this” and “they.”
- Keep verb tense consistent unless a time shift is signaled.
- Place modifiers next to the word they modify; a dangling modifier has no logical subject.
- Use commas for nonessential elements, semicolons between independent clauses, and colons after a complete clause to introduce a list or explanation.
- Keep parallel items in the same grammatical form.
Worked example
“Walking to the market, the rain soaked my jacket.” The introductory phrase modifies “I,” but the main clause subject is “rain.” Revision: “Walking to the market, I was soaked by the rain.” The reasoning: identify the modifier, find the noun it describes, then restructure so the intended subject follows the comma.
Traps
Agreement errors hidden by prepositional phrases; comma splices; pronoun shifts from “one” to “you”; “between you and I”; unnecessary commas before restrictive clauses; mixing “fewer” and “less.”