Wednesday, November 2, 2011

How to Tackle a Sentence Correction Problem

1. Check for Subject-Verb Agreement (when subject is hidden)
1a. Skip the middleman and the warm-up:
  • Prepositions
  • Modifiers (past participles, present participles, relative pronouns, prepositions, appositive)
  • Subordinate clauses (dependent clause with subject and verb and begins as a subordinate conjunctions)
1b. Does it exist?
1c. Does it agree in number?
  • Either or/Neither Or (verb follows the nearest noun)
  • Either/Neither (verb is always single)
  • And vs. Additive Phrases
  • Collective Nouns
  • Indefinite Pronouns
  • Each and Every
  • Quantity words and phrases
1d. Does it make sense?

Watch out for the following words in red and what it leads to:

Subject-Verb
And - Agree in number
Additive - As well as -Agree in number

Neither (without OR) = Singular
Neither/Either Or = Follows the noun closing to it

Pronouns/Nouns
Everytime the following appears, be on the look out!
Deadly Five: They, Their, Them, It, Its -> Pronouns/Nouns
Demonstrative Pronouns: This, That, These, Those -> Pronouns/Nouns

Verb Mood
If -> Verb Mood > Hypothetical Subjunctive
Bossy Verbs -> Verb Mood -> Command Subjunctive

Comparisons
Comparison signals: Like, unlike, as, than
Comparative ad Superlative: Between, Among

Verb Tense
Since - the word "since" show that the action is continuing from the past to the future. Therefore you use present (current) perfect (past).
Current = Has
Perfect= Been
Present Perfect: Has been
Example: Since 1987, the record HAS BEEN (Present Perfect) BROKEN (Past Tense) 8 Times.

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