Question marks seem pretty straightforward, right? Someone asks a question, and you put a question mark at the end. Simple! But the SAT has a sneaky way of making this rule more complicated. Sometimes a sentence talks about a question without actually asking one. And that’s where students can get tripped up. The good news … Read more
Some SAT grammar mistakes are hard to notice. Others accidentally create sentences that are downright strange. Dangling modifiers belong to the second group. A modifier is simply a word or phrase that describes something. The problem occurs when that descriptive phrase isn’t clearly connected to the person or thing it’s supposed to describe. Fortunately, there’s … Read more
Some SAT grammar rules are easier to understand when you stop thinking about grammar and start thinking about patterns. Parallel structure is a perfect example. The basic idea is simple: When parts of a sentence are doing the same job, they should usually have the same grammatical structure. If a sentence starts a list with … Read more
Yesterday you studied. Today you study. Tomorrow you will study. That’s verb tense in action. Verb tense tells us when something happens, and the SAT expects the verbs in a sentence or passage to make sense together. The basic idea isn’t too complicated. The tricky part is that the SAT may give you several different … Read more
Have you ever read a sentence that seemed so long you almost forgot how it started? That’s exactly what the SAT is hoping for. One of the most frequently tested grammar rules on the SAT is subject-verb agreement. While the rule itself is simple, the SAT often disguises it by filling sentences with extra words … Read more
My goodness! Pronouns are everywhere. Words like he, she, it, they, who, and which help us avoid repeating the same nouns over and over again. But on the SAT, pronouns are more than just convenient words. They have to match the nouns they replace, and they have to clearly refer to the right person or … Read more
Check it out! Apostrophes may be tiny, but they show up on the SAT surprisingly often. And while apostrophe questions can look intimidating, most of them come down to one simple idea: Does something belong to someone? If the answer is yes, you’re probably dealing with a possessive apostrophe. The SAT loves testing this concept … Read more
Supppppppppp. Here’s the thing. When students think about SAT grammar, they usually think: “Oh no… commas again.” And honestly? Fair enough. The SAT LOVES comma questions because commas can completely change the meaning and flow of a sentence. But here’s the good news: Most SAT comma questions follow a small group of predictable rules. Once … Read more
Howdy!! If SAT grammar questions had favorite hobbies, one of them would definitely be confusing students with commas. And one of the sneakiest comma rules involves names with titles. The good news? This rule is actually pretty logical once you understand one big idea: Is the name that comes with a title essential to the … Read more
One of the most useful grammar rules on the SAT Reading and Writing section is also one of the simplest: if a piece of a sentence can be removed without changing the core meaning, it’s considered non-essential information. Once you understand how to spot it—and how to punctuate it—you can pick up easy points on … Read more