Sentence Corrections

Sentence corrections section is intended to test both correctness and effectiveness of

expression. ‘Correctness’ refers to the degree to which a sentence obeys the rules of English
grammar and effectiveness is to check the one sentence which is clear and unambiguous.

Rather than simply reading all five versions of the sentence looking for the one that seems
best, search the error that has been inserted (80% of the time) in the original sentence. Then,
before looking at the answer choices, decide how you would correct that error.

Sentence Correction Strategy

Verb Rules

Rule 1 A verb must agree with its subject in number:

Number refers to whether the verb and its subject are singular or plural. A singular subject
and verb refer to one person or thing; a plural subject and verb refer to more than one.
Logically enough, the subject and verb have to match: If the subject is singular, the verb must
be singular; if the subject is plural, the verb must be plural.

In most sentences, this rule is easy to follow. You can probably tell, just by the way it sounds,
that it would be wrong to write,” Manmohan Singh were the Prime Minister” (singular subject
+ plural verb). It would also be wrong to write, “He and his wife was from Jullundur” (plural
subject + singular verb.)

Rule 2 when checking agreement; ignore any words or phrases that separate a verb
from its subject:

It’s easy to compare the subject and the verb when they are next to each other. It’s much
harder when they are separated by many other words. Watch out for this. In particular, watch
out for prepositional phrases that come between the subject and the verb. A preposition is a
word that links a noun (or a pronoun) to the rest of the sentence, usually by describing a
logical or place relationship of some kind. Words such as of, by, for, with, in, on, to, through,
from, against, near, under, beside, and above are all prepositions-so are such phrases as next
to, along with, in place of, and as well as.

A preposition is always followed by a noun (or a pronoun). The preposition, together with the
noun that follows, forms a prepositional phrase. Of the people, by accident, for fun, with my
sister, in a car, on fire, to the station, and through the tunnel are all examples of prepositional
phrases.
The key thing to remember is that the subject of a verb never appears in a prepositional
phrase.

Rule 3 Collective nouns are usually singular:

Subjective-verb agreement can be tricky when the subject is a collective noun, a noun that
names a group of people or things rather than a single entity. Words such as team, group,
club, class, family, collection, bunch, platoon, and organization are all examples of collective
nouns.

Even names of institutions such as Punjab University, Infosys, and the Parliament may be
considered collective nouns because after all, they refer to large numbers of individuals.

Despite the fact that collective nouns refer to groups, in English they are considered singular
and take singular verbs.

Rule 4 The number is singular; a number is plural:

Distinguish these two phrases, which sound deceptively similar. Both are usually followed by
prepositional phrases starting with of, but they play different roles in a sentence. In a
sentence such as the following, the word number is the subject of the verb, and the usual rule
about ignoring the prepositional phrase applies:

In the wake of latest series of airline mergers, the number of carries serving passengers in
most mid-sized cities in the eastern United States have been reduced to just three.

Rule 5 Pronouns ending in – one -, -body and – thing are singular:

Twelve indefinite pronouns fall in this group: someone, anyone, no one, every one, somebody,
anybody, nobody, everybody, something, nothing, anything, and everything,. The rule to
remember is simple: All twelve words are singular.

Rule 6 The SANAM pronouns – some, any, none, all, and most – may be either
singular or plural:

We explained earlier that you should ignore prepositional phrases when looking for the subject
for a verb. There are exceptions, however. The chief exception involves five pronouns – some,
any, none, all and most – known by their initials as the SANAM pronouns. These may be either
singular or plural, depending on how they are used in the sentence, and that generally
requires you to look at the prepositional phrase beginning with of that usually follows the
pronoun.

Rule 7 Verb tenses must reflect the sequence of events accurately:

The basic purpose of verb tenses is to indicate the time sequence of events. Most questions
related to verb tenses will involve the misuse of tenses in such a way to confuse the order in
which events happen.
Verb Tenses

Tenses Example

Past Perfect Had danced

Past Danced

Present perfect Have danced

Present Dance

Future perfect Will have danced

Future Will dance

The past, present and future tenses obviously are used to describe events happening in the
past, present, and future. The perfect tenses describe events occurring prior to the events in
the other three tenses.

Rule 8 Always use the past participle form of a verb with the helping verb ‘to have’

The past perfect, present, perfect, and future perfect tenses all contain forms of the verb ‘to
have’. Used in this way to help create tenses of other verbs, the verb ‘to have’ is called an
auxiliary verb, or, more casually, a helping verb.

The rule to remember is that when you are building a verb using the helping verb ‘to have’
you must be careful to use the proper form of the basic verb. The form to use is called the
past participle.

Principal Parts of a Verb

Form Example

Infinitive (to) dance

Past Danced

Past participle danced

Irregular Verbs

Rule 9 Use the correct past tense and past participle forms of irregular verbs.

Infinitive Past Past Participle

Do Did Done

Go Went Gone

Take Took Taken

Rise Rose Risen

Begin Began Begun

Swim Swam Swum

Throw Threw Thrown

Break Broke Broken

Burst Burst Burst

Bring Brought Brought

Lie Lay Lain

Lay Laid Laid

Get Got Got or gotten

Modifiers Rules

Rule 10 A modifying phrase must modify a word or phrase appearing in th sentence.

A modifying phrase is a group of words that works together as a unit to modify, or give more
information about something else in the sentence. As you may recall from earlier grammar
study, both adjectives and adverbs are considered modifiers; both of these parts of speech
serve to modify, or give information about, other words in the sentence. Thus, modifying
phrases are groups of words that act as adjectives or adverbs. Some modifying phrases work
as adjectives; they modify nouns or pronouns. Others work as adverbs; they modify verbs,
adjectives, or adverbs.

Rule 11 A modifying phrase must be next to what it modifies.

A misplaced modifier has something in the sentence to modify, but the two things are
separated. When the modifying phrase isn’t next to what it is supposed to modify, the
sentence becomes confusing.
Parallelism
Rule 12 Items in a list must be grammatically parallel.

You know about parallel lines in geometry: They are lines that run in the same direction, never
touching but never diverging either. In grammar, parallelism refers to words, phrases, or
clauses that “run in the same direction”. They have the same grammatical form and therefore
sound and look similar like matching bookends.

Whenever a sentence contains a list of things that play the same logical role in the sentence,
make sure they are also grammatically parallel. If not, one or more of the items should be
rewritten to make them consistent.

Rule 13 Two things being compared must be grammatically parallel.

Like items in a list, items that are compared to one another in a sentence generally need to be
grammatically parallel. Otherwise, the sentence will sound a bit disjointed.

Rule 14 Two things being compared must be logically similar.

As the saying goes, you can’t compare apples and oranges. When a sentence compares two
(or more) things, it should be written so that the things being compared are logically, as well
as grammatically, similar and consistent.

Rule 15 A subject and its complement must be logically consistent.

The two kinds of verbs are verbs of action and verbs of being. Verbs of action tell what the
subject does: dance, type, dive, manage, eat, and so on. Verbs of being tell what the subject
is. The verb to be is the most obvious example, but seem, appear, feel, sound look, remain,
become, and many others can all be used as verbs of being.

Generally, what follows a verb of being is a subject complement: something that complements
or completes the meaning of the subject. In other words, it tells us more about the subject. In
the sentence “Harinder seems tired,” tired is a subject complement. In the sentence, “Uday
became a fire fighter”, firefighter is the subject complement.

Adjective, Adverb and Pronoun Ruler

Rule 16 use adjectives to modify nouns or pronouns: use adverbs to modify verbs,
adjectives or adverbs.

An adjective is a word that modifies (gives more information about) a noun or a pronouns; it
often answers such questions as what kind? How many? Which one? By contrast, an adverb
modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb; it often answers such questions as how?
when? where? in what way? How often? and to what extent? Adverbs often (not always) end
in – ly.

Sometimes writer’s error by mistakenly using an adjective where an adverb is needed, or vice
versa.
Rule 17 Use a comparative adjective or adverb to compare two things; use a
superlative for three or more

Your basic form of an adjective is called the positive form. When you want to compare two
things, you use the comparative form, which is usually formed in one of two ways: by adding
–er to the positive form or by putting the word more in front of the adjective. (Use the second
method with an adjective that is three syllables long or longer.) When comparing more than
two things, use the superlative form, which is formed by adding –est to the positive form or by
using the word most.

Rule 18 Use second and third person pronouns consistently.

Grammarians refer to three “persons”: first person (I, me, we, and so on), second person
(you), and third person (he, she, it, they, and so one). In most contexts, it would be difficult
to confuse these persons. However, in sentences where an indefinite person is being
discussed, English allows you to use either second person or third-person constructions, and
this creates the possibility of inconsistency and error.

Connecting Clauses Rules

Rule 19 Choose the logical conjunction

Conjunctions are connecting words: The screws and bolts of language, they clamp together
words, phrases, and clauses in ways that make both logical and grammatical sense.

Conjunctions can be classified in various ways. You need to know only two categories.
Coordinating conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses that are equal in grammatical
importance. There are six: and, or, for, nor, but, and yet. Subordinating conjunctions are used
especially to connect clauses (that is, groups of words that contain a subject and a verb). The
clause introduced by a subordinating conjunction is called a dependent clause, as its name
implies, it is less important than a clause without such a conjunction, which is called an
independent clause.

A dependent clause can’t stand alone as a sentence. An independent clause can.

Rule 20 Use a semicolon (;) to connect two independent clauses.

We’ve explained that one of the six co-ordinating conjunctions can be used to connect two
independent clauses. The other proper way to connect two independent clauses is with a
semicolon (;). That’s the main use of a semicolon.
Miscellaneous Rules
Rule 21 Avoid run – on sentences.

A run-on sentence isn’t necessarily a particularly long sentence. It’s simply a sentence in
which two (or more) independent clauses have been shoved together without either a
semicolon or a co-ordinating conjunction to join them properly. (When a comma is erroneously
used to connect them, the result is a comma splice – one type of run – on sentence). Here’s
an example: Besides being a writer and lecturer, Mark Twain fancied himself an entrepreneur;
he made and lost several fortunes backing various business ventures.

If this sentence were divided into two sentences after the word entrepreneur, either half could
stand alone as a sentence.

Rule 22 Avoid need less repetition

Be on the lookout for sentences that are unnecessarily verbose that is, wordy and too long.
Good writing is economical and concise. The test markers will usually make their examples of
verbosity fairly obvious. One form of verbosity to watch out for is sheer, needless repetition of
a fact or an idea – also called redundancy.

Rule 23 When idiomatic paired phrases are used, always complete the idiom.

An idiom is a phrase that is peculiar to a particular language. Often, there is no special “logic”
or “rule” behind the use of a given idiom.

Rule 24 Distinguish countable quantities from quantities that cannot be counted.

The word “much” is used correctly to describe quantities that cannot be counted, whereas
“many” is used for quantities that can be counted. For example, you might refer to the beach
as having “so much sand” because sand is a non-countable substance; you don’t refer to “a
hundred sands,” for example. By contrast, you could say that your shoe contains “so many
grains of sand” because grains of sand are countable; you might count, a hundred grains of
sand,’

Correcting Errors
Approximately four out of five sentences correction sentences will contain an error in grammar
style or usage and in most cases you’ll be able to ‘hear’ that error by reading the sentence
carefully.

Having done that, the next step in tackling the question is to consider how you’d correct the
error if you had written the sentence. Do this before looking at any of the answer choices. Try
rephrasing the faulty part of the sentence in your mind, figuring out what word or words you’d
eliminate, change, move or add and imagine how the improved version would read.