For the GMAT's Verbal Section: succinctly covers the 8 sentence correction error categories the GMAT states in its official guide, along with exceptions for these grammar rules. Also includes additional grammar rules from the Manhattan Guide and Princeton's Cracking the GMAT. Notes are prepared by ...
8 Sentence Correction Categories (from OG)
Each incorrect answer choice contains a flaw in at least one of these categories.
Agreement
Subject-verb agreement:
● singular subjects take singular verbs, whereas plural subjects take plural verbs
● most English verbs do have a distinct present-tense form for third person singular
● to be has distinctive forms for first person singular (am, was)
Example:
● Correct: "Each of the circuits has its own switch."
● Incorrect: "Each of the circuits have its own switch."
Agreement between terms that have the same referent:
● A pronoun that stands for another element in the discourse must agree with its
antecedent in person, number, and gender
○ Antecedent: an earlier word/phrase/clause to which another word refers to
● Where a noun has the same referent as another noun (both refer to the same thing), the
two terms should agree in number.
Example:
● Correct: “When you dream, you are usually asleep”
● Incorrect: “When one dreams, you are usually asleep”
● Correct: "I threw away the banana and the mango because they were both spoiled."
● Incorrect: "I threw away the banana and the mango because it was both spoiled."
Complicating factors
● Quantities/ quantifying phrases: In some cases, formally plural quantities may take plural
verbs, and in other cases they are construed as singular.
○ Example: "Six dollars were withdrawn from the box, one at a time" and "Six
dollars is a high price for that" are both correct.
● Quantifying phrases: (eg. a number of, a percentage of) often function as subject
modifiers and are treated similarly to numbers. In other cases, similar phrases function
as subject.
○ Use the sandman ‘of-phrase’ trick as in SANAM
○ The number of (singular), a number of (plural)
○ Example: ''A large proportion of the trees are flowering" is essentially like "Three
of the trees are flowering."
○ Example: "a small percentage of our profits is reinvested" and "a small
percentage of our employees oppose the new plan." are both correct.
● Each: singular as a pronoun/ when used as an adjective before a noun. Does not affect
if it is a predicate and modifies a plural collection.
○ Example: "Each of the circuits has its own switch.", "Each machine has been
inspected" vs "The machines have each been inspected"
, ○ Predicate: the part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating
something about the subject
● Plurals that appear singular: when a formally singular noun referring to a group or culture
is construed as plural. No simple rule governs the use of such terms.
○ One can say, for example, "the British are" or "the Inuit are" but not "the German
are" or "the Cuban are." Police is plural, but many ‘navy’ is singular.
● Collective nouns construed as singular or plural: Many nouns referring to groups have a
singular form (eg. team, choir, platoon, crew, assembly). They may be construed as
plural if the writer intends to distribute the predicate to the individual members of the
group rather than to refer to the group as a single entity.
○ Thus, one may say "the staff are working in small groups" but also "the staff is
larger than it used to be."
● Plurals construed as singular: Some formally plural nouns, such as news, are construed
as singular in normal usage. A title that has a plural form (eg. The Grapes of Wrath)
takes a singular verb if it refers to a single work, and some organization names may be
construed as singular even though they have a plural form.
○ Example: the phrase the Cayman Islands may be singular when referring to the
country as a political entity and plural when referring to the islands as multiple
pieces of land.
● Singular verbs that could appear plural: for most English verbs (with exception of to be) ,
the infinitive is the same as the present plural and the present subjunctive. Furthermore,
the singular past subjunctive is the same as the plural. Thus, there is a risk that at first
glance a correct verb form used with a singular subject may appear plural.
○ Example: "The researcher suspend further testing" would be incorrect by itself,
but in the following sentence it is in the subjunctive mood and is correct: "We
considered it imperative that the researcher suspend further testing."
○ Example: "The mayor attend the hearings" would be incorrect by itself, but in the
sentence, "In none of these cases will either the councilor or the mayor attend
the hearings," the verb form is correct; it is an infinitive preceded by the auxiliary
verb will
○ Infinitive: the basic form of a verb
○ Subjunctive: relatively rare verb form that expresses something desired or
imagined
● Words that sound plural but are singular:
○ Tom or John (singular nouns connected by ‘or’)
○ the family, the audience, the number, the amount
○ Pronouns: everyone, everybody, everything, no one, nobody, nothing, anyone,
anybody, anything, none, each, every, whoever, whatever
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