The SAT Proofreading and Editing Section: Basic Principles
First Grammar, Then TechniquesIn this article I'll cover everything you need to know to ace the 35-minute multiple-choice section of the SAT Writing Test. Remember: these proofreading and editing questions are just as important to your final writing score as the essay.
First we'll review the fourteen simple grammatical concepts tested in this section. That may sound like a lot to review, but I'm sure you're familiar with most of these grammatical concepts already. Once we've gotten the basic information out of the way, I'll show you specific techniques for handling the three different question formats.
If you've never taken a grammar course, relax: there's not much you need to know, and we'll be covering everything thoroughly. Still, to move things along we won't linger too long on the fundamentals; students who have trouble telling the difference between a noun and a verb should consider postponing taking the SAT.
There's a lot of material in this chapter. Even though you are probably familiar with much of it already, I strongly recommend that you skim the section first. Spread your indepth review over several days in small sessions rather than trying to digest everything in one sitting.
SAT-Specific Grammar Only
We'll be reviewing all the grammar you need to know for the SAT, but only that grammar. Moreover, I'll be covering these concepts as tested on the SAT. I'll occasionally take liberties with grammatical terms, rules, and even definitions.
For example, if a particular grammatical rule has an exception but that exception never shows up on the SAT, I'll state that rule absolutely. To point out rare exceptions to simple grammatical principles, or to discuss grammatical nuances that vex and confound college English professors, would complicate matters needlessly.
Often a single grammatical misunderstanding will lead to several errors. If so, I will group the analogous grammatical concepts under the same heading even though the concepts may not be related.
In short, I'll take shortcuts to keep things simple (even though some of these shortcuts may horrify traditionalists). My goal here is to raise your SAT Writing score as quickly and efficiently as possible, not to turn you into a grammarian.
Before we get to the details, now's a good time to alert you to a major pitfall awaiting unsuspecting students: using your "ear" to spot writing errors.
First, a Peek Ahead at the Three Question Formats
Here is a quick overview.
- The first question format deals primarily with errors with particular words or phrases (usage questions).
- The second question format deals with errors between different words and phrases (sentence correction questions).
- The third question format deals primarily with errors between different sentences (paragraph correction questions).
Students who aren't sure what they should be looking for on the proofreading questions tend to rely, naturally enough, on their ears: if a sentence "sounds right," they assume it's grammatically correct. (One-sixth of the proofreading questions are error-free.)
Relying on your ear to detect writing problems is natural, even tempting, but it's a big mistake. A big, big mistake. Sentences in this section that "sound wrong" are often perfectly okay, while incorrect sentences often "sound okay."
Here's why this natural approach is so faulty. First, our ears are attuned to informal speech patterns, but the SAT writing questions reflect formal standards of what is correct and acceptable.
In everyday speech, hanging out with our friends or family, we get away with sloppy grammar—and sloppy thinking—all the time. You may have heard your English teacher distinguish between "written English" and "spoken English." ( "Hey, it's me" is acceptable in spoken English but unacceptable in written English.) Who can be bothered with the effort required to speak with precision when our friends can figure out what we "really mean" without the effort? What a pain, right?
Isn't it ironic? We've become so attuned to finding informal speech acceptable that sentences that articulate precisely what the speaker means with formal correctness sound stilted or somehow alien. Our ears mislead us both ways: bad grammar sounds normal, and good grammar sounds awkward.
The second reason that relying on your ear is dangerous is that a number of the writing problems you're hunting for in the questions are not grammatical errors. Many are actually logical errors, and these will sound perfectly okay to the unsuspecting ear.
On the multiple-choice proofreading questions, you must be on the lookout for sentences that literally say one thing but were meant to say another.
In short, a word or phrase can't simply sound wrong—you have to know why it's wrong in order to mark it so.
You Think I'm Kidding About Relying on Your Ear?
To demonstrate the dangers of relying on your ear to judge grammatical correctness, I've prepared the following quiz for you. One or more of the following sentences may contain an error. None of these is a "trick question," but do read each one carefully. If you spot an error, jot it down on a piece of scrap paper—bonus points if you know how to correct it—and then check your responses against the answer key.
By the way, the actual format of the SAT proofreading questions differs a bit from these bare sentences, but let's keep things simple for now. These illustrations are super-tough to make a point, so expect a struggle. Good luck!
- The two pieces of woodwork by the apprentice carpenters were each so finely sanded that it took the trained eye of their teacher to determine that the oak tabletop was more nearly flat than was the pine tabletop.
- After a thorough examination, the doctor told Melissa that she should exercise more vigorously as well as more regularly.
- The photo-finish of the 100-meter race was so close that each of the first five finishers thought that they had won.
- Titus Andronicus, one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works and the inspiration for the popular movie Gladiator, is a play where the noble protagonist suffers a tragic fate.
- The academic habits and expectations of teenage girls are very different from teenage boys.
- The causes of the American Civil War were not only social and political, but also economical and technological.
- All of the former classmates are planning on attending the formal reunion ceremony, and most have said that they will also attend the reception party afterwards.
- When completely painted with the third and final coat of varnish, Peter set the antique chair outside on the porch to get some sun.
- "By the time you get back," Tim assured his doubtful mother and father as they were preparing to leave for a parent-teacher conference, "I promise I will complete my history term paper."
- Were it not for the downturn of the local economy last year, the then-popular mayor would surely have been reelected.
(Please Don't Read These Explanations Until You've Taken the Quiz)
Only the first and last sentences were grammatically correct. The other eight sentences contained precisely the kinds of errors you're likely to see on your test. Give yourself credit only if you spotted the specific error. Remember: it's not enough merely to say something within a sentence "sounded wrong."
- The two pieces of woodwork by the apprentice carpenters were each so finely sanded that it took the trained eye of their teacher to determine that the oak tabletop was more nearly flat than was the pine tabletop.
(Error-free sentence: although this sentence may seem awkward, the idea it expresses has to be phrased this particular way. It's impossible for one thing to be flatter than another—something is either flat or it's not—but one thing can be more nearly flat.)
- After a thorough examination, the doctor told Melissa that she should exercise more vigorously as well as more regularly.
(Ambiguity error: we aren't sure whether the doctor was advising Melissa that she should exercise more regularly, or admitting that she herself should exercise more regularly.)
- The photo-finish of the 100-meter race was so close that each of the first five finishers thought that they had won.
(Singular-plural error: the pronoun each is singular, so instead of the word they, which is plural, the sentence should use the singular he or she.)
- Titus Andronicus, one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works and the inspiration for the popular movie Gladiator, is a play where the noble protagonist suffers a tragic fate.
(Pronoun error: the sentence should read, a play in which ...)
- The academic habits and expectations of teenage girls are very different from teenage boys.
(Comparison error: this sentence compares girls academic habits with boys, but the writer meant to compare girls habits with those of boys.)
- The causes of the American Civil War were not only social and political, but also economical and technological.
(Diction error: economical means thrifty. Whoops. The word should have been economic.)
- All of the former classmates are planning on attending the formal reunion ceremony, and most have said that they will also attend the reception party afterwards.
(Idiom error: You don't plan on doing something, you plan to do it.)
- When completely painted with the third and final coat of varnish, Peter set the antique chair outside on the porch to get some sun.
(Modifier error: presumably the chair was painted, not Peter! The sentence should read, 'When Peter had completely painted the antique chair, he set it outside on the porch.)
- "By the time you get back," Tim assured his doubtful mother and father as they were preparing to leave for a parent-teacher conference, "I promise I will complete my history term paper."
(Verb tense error: Tim is promising that by the time his parents return, he will have completed his paper.)
- Were it not for the downturn of the local economy last year, the then-popular mayor would surely have been reelected.
(Error-free sentence: the sentence could have been phrased differently and certainly more clearly, but it contains no grammatical errors.)
Fortunately, once you know what you're looking for, you won't have to rely on your ear to pick out the writing problems lurking in the multiple-choice questions. It's useful to think of the proofreading and editing questions as a scavenger hunt.
You might be surprised to learn that the test covers quite a narrow range of grammatical and other writing problems. I'm going to arm you with a specific list so that you will know precisely which errors you need to find and how many of each. (Unlike too many hapless students, you will not be wandering through the SAT Writing Test vaguely looking for errors.) After all, it would be hard to go on a scavenger hunt without a list of what you're looking for, right?
A Checklist for Your SAT Scavenger Hunt
Here are the fourteen grammatical concepts you need to know. You don't need to memorize these categories (which we'll use for discussion purposes only), and you won't need to classify errors on the test, either. The only thing you'll need to do on the SAT is recognize a writing problem when you see it. That said, if you're struggling with a potential error that you can't fit into one of these categories—if the wording merely "sounds wrong"—it probably isn't an error at all.
I've listed the categories in order of their overall importance, combining how frequently the category appears on the SAT with the category's average difficulty. Just skim this chart for now; you can always refer back to it later.
| Category | Frequency | Difficulty |
| Pronoun Errors | Very High | Medium |
| Singular-Plural Errors | Very High | Medium |
| Idiom Errors | High | High |
| Comparison Errors | Medium | Very High |
| Parallel Structure Errors | High | Medium |
| Wordiness and Redundancy** | High | Medium |
| Modifier Errors* | Medium | High |
| Ambiguity** | Medium | High |
| Diction Errors | Low | Very High |
| Adjective-Adverb Errors | Medium | Medium |
| Verb Tense Errors | Medium | Low |
| Sentence Fragments or Run-ons* | Medium | Low |
| Transition or Punctuation Errors* | Medium | Low |
| Logic Errors** | Very Low | Very High |
The difficulty of each category reflects how easy it is to overlook this type of error on the SAT, not how hard the concept is to learn; the frequency refers to how often the category shows up on an SAT. The two most frequent errors—singular-plural errors and pronoun errors—appear on average three or four times each; diction errors, a low frequency category, will appear once, at most twice; logic errors, perhaps not at all.
The asterisked (*) categories appear only on sentence correction questions, all other categories appear on these as well as sentence correction questions. The double-asterisked (**) categories are usually tested indirectly, among the choices rather than in the original sentence.
For most students, reviewing the top five categories will result in the largest and most rapid score gains:
- Pronoun errors
- Singular-plural errors
- Idiom errors
- Comparison errors
- Parallel structure errors
If you ever studied grammar in school, the topic may bring up nightmare memories of terms like "subjunctive tense" and "past participle" and "periodic sentences." Ugh. I promise not to use any complex terms like these.
We will, however, need certain basic terms to discuss grammar on the SAT. I've pared down the list to ten basic words. You probably learned these terms years ago, which is why we'll quickly review them: you may have forgotten their precise meanings. Again, you don't need to memorize any of the following definitions or examples.
- noun (hat, Canada, beaver, equality, apricot)
A noun is the name of a person, place, object, or concept. The ten most common nouns in the English language are time, year, people, way, man, day, thing, child, government, and work.
verb (run, throw, is, believe, investigated, had forgotten)
Verbs describe actions or states of being. The ten most common verbs are be, have, do, will, say, would, can, get, make, and go. Verbs have different tenses depending on whether the action is taking place (present tense), has taken place (past tense), or will take place (future tense).
adjective (bold, fast, solid, thin, funny)
Adjectives modify or describe nouns or pronouns. The ten most common adjectives are other, good, new, old, great, high, small, different, social, and important.
adverb (very, never, really, too, slowly)
Adverbs primarily modify verbs, but they can also modify adjectives and other adverbs. The ten most common adverbs are so, up, then, out, then, now, only, just, more, and also.
pronoun (it, I, you, them, her, something, himself, anyone, none, everybody)
Pronouns stand in the place of nouns to make our writing smoother and less repetitive. Because pronouns replace other words from which they are usually separated within or between sentences, it's important to verify that the various parts all agree. Pronoun problems account for more grammatical errors on the SAT than do problems with any other part of speech.
subject
The subject of a sentence is what the sentence is about. (The rest of the sentence tells you something about the subject.)
object
If a noun or a pronoun receives the action of a verb (if something happens to that noun or pronoun), that word is the object of the verb.
- preposition (through, between, before, around, against)
Prepositions usually precede nouns and describe the relationship between things in space or time. The two most common prepositions—of and in—appear more frequently on SAT grammar questions than all other prepositions combined. The next ten most-common prepositions are to, for, with, on, by, at, from, as, into, and about.
- phrase (in the middle, at the corner, of geese)
A phrase is a group of related words without a subject or verb. Phrases can act as the equivalent of adjectives, adverbs, and other parts of speech. The most important type of phrase for our purposes is the prepositional phrase, which begins, as you might expect, with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun. Phrases are best understood in relation to their grammatical cousins: clauses.
clause (it was early, because the dog barked)
A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and its verb. A clause can sometimes stand on its own as a complete sentence (as in the first example above) and sometimes not (as in the second example). Don't worry about the distinction between a phrase and a clause, or between different types of clauses. What's important for our purposes is that both phrases and clauses refer to related groups of words.
Learning grammar often seems like you have to memorize dozens of bewildering and arbitrary rules. In fact most grammatical rules are based on logical principles, but the principles are rarely explained to students.
Once you understand the principle behind a rule, the rule is easier to remember and to apply. The most fundamental concept underlying grammatical rules is the principle of agreement. Different parts of a sentence should not disagree with each other.
Verbs have to agree with the nouns they refer to. For example, in the sentence, The temperature were cold outside so dress warmly, the plural verb "were" does not agree with the singular noun "temperature." What's more, the verb "were" is in the past tense, which does not agree with the tense of the verb "dress."
Just as verbs have to agree with their nouns, so do pronouns. Problems between nouns, pronouns, and verbs account for a large number of the errors on the proofreading questions. As a first step on the proofreading questions, make sure that any connected parts are in agreement, especially nouns or pronouns, with each other and with their verbs.
On the proofreading and editing questions, whenever you see a noun or verb or pronoun, whether or not it is underlined—stop! Establish what word or phrase it's related to or referring to, and see whether the two parts are in agreement.
In the rest of the section I'll show you every type of error you need to look for. Not all errors in this section are based on noun-verb-pronoun disagreements, but checking for these in a sentence is an excellent first step.
How the SAT Camouflages Simple Grammatical Errors to Make Them Difficult to Spot
If most SAT grammatical errors come down to basic problems in agreement, you may be wondering how the proofreading and editing questions can get so difficult. Here's how.
Even the most grammatically challenged students notice agreement errors when the related terms are next to each other. The test writers camouflage agreement errors by inserting phrases that separate the related terms and distract you from the underlying disagreement.
Read the next 24-word sentence quickly and see whether the agreement error is obvious (I'm guessing it won't be):
- The degree of error in calculations done by ancient Mayan astronomers long before the invention of telescopes were, even by modern standards, incredibly small.
Let's work backwards to see how a simple error is made difficult. I'll strip the sentence down to its essential words:
- The degree were small.
Now let's see what happens when the test writers start adding words to the sentence, and watch how the error becomes hidden. They start by adding an adverb:
- The degree were incredibly small.
- The degree of error were incredibly small.
- The degree of error in calculations done by ancient Mayan astronomers were incredibly small.
- The degree of error in calculations done by ancient Mayan astronomers long before the invention of telescopes were, even by modern standards, incredibly small.
Remember that widely separated parts of a sentence may be grammatically connected, so you can't simply read the questions word by word. You'll sometimes need to read a bit, jump to another part of the sentence, then jump back to continue reading through. You May Need to Read a Proofreading Question Two or Even Three Times
It's easy to think that because you read and speak English, all you have to do to spot errors on the SAT Writing Test is read the sentences as you read, say, this one.
Wrong.
Just reading through a sentence isn't enough. If you want to spot all the errors—and get a high score—you will have to chop through each sentence suspiciously, word by word and phrase by phrase.
You must read a bit (for example, until you get to a verb), then see what it refers to (which subject and possibly which object), and once you've verified that the two are in agreement, you can move on to the next part of the sentence, and so on. And as you've seen, the two parts that need to be in agreement can be far apart.
The problem, as we've discussed, is the presence of all these usually irrelevant words and phrases that distract and confuse us. On the first readthrough of a sentence—and you may need to read a sentence two or three times before you spot an error—read "around" the phrases and clauses that merely pad the sentence, camouflaging the error. If you haven't spotted an error yet, then you can go back and examine those phrases one by one to see whether there's anything wrong.
It's easy, focusing on individual phrases in this way as we must, to lose sight of the big picture, so if you still haven't spotted an error, read quickly through the sentence a third time, as a whole. If you haven't spotted an error at that point—one-sixth of the questions contain no error, remember—move on. Rather than beat your head against the question, mark the sentence as no error and circle the question number. If you have time remaining at the end of the section, return to the questions you weren't sure about and read them with fresh eyes.
The Bracket Technique
A powerful technique that allows us to read around potentially distracting phrases is to enclose them in parentheses. As you read through a sentence for the first time, place parentheses around either of the following:
- any prepositional phrases (by far the most common prepositions are of and in, followed by to, for, by, and with)
- any clauses set off by commas
- The degree (of error in calculations done by ancient Mayan astronomers long before the invention of telescopes) were, (even by modern standards), incredibly small. Notice that if we read around the parentheses, ignoring the words within them, we're back to our original basic sentence in which the agreement error was obvious. If we didn't find an error outside the parentheses, our next step would be to examine the words within the parentheses.
Using your pencil to break up each sentence into manageable bits also helps you stay focused. Remember Einstein's words of advice that we discussed in The SAT: How to Gain (or Lose) 30 IQ Points—Instantly!, Your pencil is smarter than you are. As an exercise, why don't you practice applying parentheses to the ten sentences you completed on page two of this section.
Learn to Read Literally
In school it's important to figure out what your teachers mean, rather than listening to what they literally say. On the SAT Writing Test, though, the opposite is true: you need to pay attention to what each sentence literally says, rather than to what you think it means or to what the sentence was trying to say.
In The SAT: How Your Brain Can Get You in Trouble, we discussed the trouble that your brain's natural intelligence can get you into on every section of the SAT. Your brain is programmed to make sense of the information it receives, so it fills in the blanks when something doesn't make sense.
Here's the problem: many grammatical errors result in nonsense, literally. When your brain encounters something that doesn't make sense, it instantaneously tries to figure out what's going on. In the real world that's what your brain is supposed to do. On the proofreading and editing questions, however, what your brain "hears" and what a nonsensical sentence actually says can be radically different. Our introductory quiz on page 2 of this section contained three illustrations of this tendency: questions 2, 5, and 8. If you missed one or more of these questions, you really have to watch out for this problem.
Question 2:
- After a thorough examination, the doctor told Melissa that she should exercise more vigorously as well as more regularly.
What it seems to say: Melissa's doctor advised Melissa to get more exercise.
What it actually says: We can't tell. The sentence might be saying that, but it might be saying that the doctor is admitting to Melissa that she, the doctor, should be getting more exercise.
Question 5:
- The academic habits and expectations of teenage girls are very different from teenage boys.
What it seems to say: Girls study differently from the way boys study.
What it actually says: The way girls study is different from the way boys are. Yes, that's nonsensical, but that's what the sentence says literally.
Question 8:
- When completely painted with the third and final coat of varnish, Peter set the antique chair outside on the porch to get some sun.
What it seems to say: That Peter varnished an old chair and then set it outside to dry.
What it actually says: That Peter was painted with varnish and then went outside to get some sun, perhaps while sitting in an antique chair. Yes, that's nonsensical—and that's why it's wrong.
Not all grammatical errors result in nonsense, but many do. You're a proofreader on these questions, so your job is to be suspicious of everything you read.
First, a Look at Error-Free Sentences
Before we consider the different types of grammatical errors you need to hunt for on these questions, we need to discuss error-free sentences.
There's a strong temptation to think that all the sentences in this section must have some problem with them. After all, each sentence presents you with four suggested errors. Sometimes, however, you'll read a sentence but you won't find anything wrong with it. The sentence sounded a bit strange, but you couldn't put your finger on anything specific.
You think that maybe you missed something so you reread the sentence, closely examining each choice. But still you find no error. In fact, you're absolutely sure that two of the five choices can't be right, but you're not sure about the other choices. You grit your teeth in frustration and decide to read it a third time, and now you really focus on each remaining choice. You come up empty-handed again.
I told you that your ear for grammar is not completely reliable. Sometimes grammatically incorrect sentences sound fine to our ears, while grammatically correct sentences sometimes sound strange. Don't drive yourself crazy—and waste time—searching too long for errors where none may exist.
On average, one-sixth of the 49 proofreading questions are grammatically correct.
Let's take another look at the two error-free examples from our introductory quiz: questions 1 and 10.
Question 1:
- The two pieces of woodwork by the apprentice carpenters were each so finely sanded that it took the trained eye of their teacher to determine that the oak tabletop was more nearly flat than was the pine tabletop.
Discussion: The uncommon phrase "more nearly" sounds alien to most students, who then assume that the phrase must be wrong. It's not. If a word or a phrase in a particular sentence merely "sounds weird" but you can't put your finger on why it's wrong, the phrase may be perfectly okay.
Question 10:
- Were it not for the downturn of the local economy last year, the then-popular mayor would surely have been reelected.
Discussion: This sentence opens with an uncommon phrase and also ends with a lengthy verb phrase. Could that sentence have been phrased more clearly? Undoubtedly. But just because you can think of a different or even better way to rewrite a sentence does not mean that the sentence as written is grammatically incorrect.
Now that you know how awkward or stilted correct sentences can sound, you won't be so tempted to rely on your ear to determine whether some part of a sentence is grammatically incorrect.
Sometimes a proofreading question will include a difficult or unfamiliar word like one of the following: inviolable, usurped, inestimable, whereabouts, invasive, attests, belying. Don't be intimidated and think that the word or the sentence is necessarily incorrect. The proofreading questions do not test vocabulary.
I'll have more to say about the topic of difficult words on these questions when we get to diction errors. Okay, then, let's explore the major grammatical errors on the SAT proofreading questions, arranged roughly in order of importance.
From The RocketReview Revolution: The Ultimate Guide to the New SAT and the PSAT by Adam Robinson. Copyright © 2005. Used by arrangement with Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
If you'd like to buy this book, click here.
