<p>I'm currently taking an SAT prep class and the writing/grammar teacher is absolutely TERRIBLE. This being said, I think that a lot of people also struggle with grammar - it gets tedious and nit-picky. I figured that a lot of us could benefit from this and use it as a general study guide for SAT grammar questions (although, do take things posted here with a grain of salt - always do a quick search to make sure it's accurate before you take the person's word!)</p>
<p>Post any grammar rules you know, however basic or complicated. I'd like to try to keep it within SAT level, though, which really isn't very high, but at least everything will (hopefully) be understandable to the general public. Keep definitions short and concise, and please do give examples if possible!</p>
<p>Also, if you spot something on here that's inaccurate, please point it out and correct it - none of us will benefit from wrong information.</p>
<p>This probably won't be the most interesting thread on CC, but hopefully we'll get at least some input from you all!</p>
<p>Remember parallelism. </p>
<p>Semicolons only go between two independent clauses.</p>
<p>If a two-word adjective goes before the noun it describes, it should be hyphenated.</p>
<p>The following words do not need a hyphen: overeager, semicircle
(I’ll add more when I think of them.)</p>
<p>(This whole sentence is in parentheses, so the punctuation is too.)
My punctuation is outside (the parentheses).</p>
<p>Irregardless is not grammatically correct.</p>
<p>It’s grammatically correct, but it’s not a standard word.</p>
<p>Avoid using “they” to mean “he or she” whenever possible. A lot of times you can just make the whole sentence plural and avoid the need for a singular gender-neutral pronoun.</p>
<p>When deciding between using “and I” or “and me,” get rid of the third party’s name and the “and” to test the sentence. </p>
<p>He likes Shelley and me/I.
He likes me. </p>
<p>Shelly and me/I went to the zoo.
I went to the zoo. </p>
<p>Always using “I” isn’t correct!!! People always do that because they think it sounds more proper. It is, in fact, improper to use “I” in many cases.</p>
<p>You cannot mix-and-match the words “one” and “you”, they must remain consistent throughout. </p>
<p>Singular nouns are referred to by singular nouns. Plural nouns go with plural pronouns. </p>
<p>Look out for adverbs that are switched with adjectives, and vice versa. Most often, adverbs will be replaced with adjectives.</p>
<p>Whom = pronoun for object of a sentence
Who = pronoun for subject of a sentence</p>
<p>Also, if you’re not sure about when to use who/whom, who can usually be replaced by he/she and whom can usually be replaced by him/her.</p>
<p>The SAT frowns on wordiness. Pick the shortest and most correct answer.</p>
<p>Just by the SAT Writing Guide by Erika Melzer. It covers everything, uses real SAT questions from the blue book and is very thorough. (I’m assuming if you can afford a tutor, you can afford prepbooks). I got 770 (-1) and others who used it - StudiousMaximus I think, got 800s.</p>
<p>can’t say “more unique” or “most unique”… unique has to be used by itself</p>
<p>Not tested on the SAT, but an interesting piece of trivia - the comma between a thing stated and an “and” is called the oxford comma! </p>
<p>e.g. John, Mary, ← and I went to the bookstore.</p>
<p>Take about 5 practice tests and you’ll start noticing the pattern. My scores went from 680 (diagnostic test) to consistently 750-800 on the last 5 tests just by familiarizing myself with the kinds of questions asked by the Writing MC.</p>
<p>@converge - Care to share the pattern?</p>
<p>Not sure if a vs an tested on sat. A goes before words that begin with a consonant. An goes before words that begin with a vowel or the letter h.</p>
<p>And sometimes “a” can go before words that start with U if it makes a Y sound.</p>
<p>Two of the biggest things that the SAT writing section tests are subject/verb agreement and pronoun case. Sounds easy, but many people get confused because the SAT can string together lots of prepositional phrases to make sentences seem more confusing than they are. They also LOVE compound subjects in which you have to choose a pronoun case (I/me), for instance. So, as people above have said, they might say:</p>
<p>The telephone operator asked for Kelsey and (I/me) to speak on the phone.
(in this case “me” is correct because “Kelsey and me” is the object of the preposition).
A lot of times substituting the plural pronoun makes it easy to tell which case to use. For example, you would say that the operator asked for “us,” which is objective, which tells you that you need me, an objective case pronoun. </p>
<p>They also like dangling modifiers sometimes. Tricky things, but think about this:
Walking through the park, the map finally became clear to Danny. </p>
<p>The way it’s constructed, the map is the thing walking in the park. Obviously you want Danny to walk through the park. So,
Walking through the park, Danny began to understand the map clearly. </p>
<p>Hope that helps :)</p>
<p>One more thing: they like to make sure you know what a comma splice is. It’s when you take two independent clauses and just stick a comma in between to make it one sentence. For example:</p>
<p>The table was large and heavy, John struggled to move it.</p>
<p>Two separate sentences, potentially. So, you can either add a conjunction such as “so” or just separate it into two sentences.</p>
<p>They’ll also test you on redundancy and repetitiveness.</p>
<p>ohhhh ^ grammar jokes. :)</p>