Grammar and Usage
Domain 1 tests your command of standard edited American English at the word level: subject-verb agreement, pronoun case and reference, verb tense and form, modifier placement, and precise word choice. Items typically ask you to choose the correct version of a sentence or spot the error.
Agreement
- A verb agrees with its subject, not with a phrase that follows it: The list of candidates is long.
- Indefinite pronouns (each, either, neither, everyone, anybody) are singular: Each of the files needs a password.
- Subjects joined by and take a plural verb; subjects joined by or or nor agree with the nearer element.
- Collective nouns (team, committee) take a singular verb when the group acts as a unit.
Pronouns and verbs
- Use subject pronouns for subjects and after linking verbs; use object pronouns after prepositions: between you and me.
- Every pronoun needs one clear antecedent. Ambiguous they in The supervisor told the intern that she was late is a defect.
- Keep tense consistent unless meaning requires a shift; use present tense for literary events and general truths.
Worked example
Original: Each of the reporters assigned to the trial have submitted their notes. Reasoning: the subject is Each, which is singular, so the verb must be has. Their lacks a plural antecedent, and formal edited prose avoids singular they here. Revision: Each of the reporters assigned to the trial has submitted his or her notes. Smoother: All the reporters assigned to the trial have submitted their notes.
Traps
- One of the students who have vs One of the students has: the relative pronoun takes the plural antecedent, but the main verb agrees with one.
- Fewer with countable nouns, less with mass nouns.
- Shifts in point of view (you, one, we) inside a sentence.
- Misplaced only, almost, and even, which alter meaning: She only read the abstract is not the same as She read only the abstract.