Why is English so hard?

<p>I dont understand why the English section is so hard. I took a practice test and got a 27 and all of the questions I got wrong didnt make sense. They were really confusing with dashes and semicolons and all of that stuff. Is there any way that any of you know can give me help with like the rules with who/whom, :/;, and all of that fun stuff?</p>

<p>It’s all a matter of knowing proper English grammar. Don’t let text-messaging/IM badly influence you!</p>

<p>You probably don’t need to buy a practice book just to look up facts about English grammar (e.g. semicolon vs. colon), it might be a good idea to search online first.</p>

<p>Ok thanks. I was just really confused because I learned that when someones name is in a sentence, it is offset by a “comma hug” (thanks Barrons). But when I took a test, I circled that and the answer did not have commas which was confusing.</p>

<p>The question was something like:</p>

<p>…the engineer (Insert name here)- blah blah blah</p>

<p>A) No Change
B) the engineer, (name),
C) the engineer (name)
D) the engineer; (name)</p>

<p>I know that Im not the best at grammer (or reading), but im pretty sure that B is supposed to be correct.</p>

<p>*grammar.</p>

<p>According to the question you posted, B would be the correct answer. I currently cannot think of an example in which a ‘comma hug’ would not be appropriate.</p>

<p>If you can recreate the question, I would have a better understanding of the issue you were presented with.</p>

<p>what I posted above was similar to the question. I just dont remember the persons name. But it said that having no commas wuold be correct and I was really confused.</p>

<p>yeah ACT english seems a bit difficult… maybe cause im used to the SAT …
when i first saw the ACT english section, i was literally saying to myself *** is this sh1t</p>

<p>I used a prep book but didn’t really put that much effort into it, and English was the only subject I studied. I got a 35 on English. I’ll come back to this thread tomorrow (I’m not at home right now) and post some tips from the book! (Don’t know which book it was either, sorry)</p>

<p>It depends on the context, but it seems to me that C may be correct. The name of the engineer is a restrictive modifier. The reader wouldn’t know which engineer u r referring to without the name there. Hence, u would not separate it using commas.</p>

<p>Here’s an example of a restrictive modifier.
ex) The novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina.</p>

<p>Commas imply that the phrase between the commas is unnecessary for the sentence.</p>