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Introduction
In this document, I will be explaining the types of things that you need to learn to look out for on the
multiple-choice writing section of the SAT.
My goal here is not to give you a thorough and painful description of every single grammatical concept in
the English language. If you've been watching my SAT lessons online, you know that there are two
reasons I don't want to do this:
1. First, only a limited number of grammatical concepts will appear on the SAT anyway. For
instance, you won't see anything having to do with possessives, spelling, or split infinitives. So
studying those things would be a waste of time for our purposes.
2. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, since the SAT is locked into a multiple-choice
format, we don't really need to know our grammar all that well. We only need to know it in a way
that it can be tested by the SAT. For instance, you shouldn’t learn how to rewrite run-on
sentences when you're studying for the SAT; instead, you should learn how to recognize when
the College Board has rewritten a run-on sentence correctly, because the way that you might
have rewritten it on your own won't really help you if it doesn't appear as one of the answer
choices.
So this is not about learning grammar. It's about learning just enough grammar to answer all the SAT
Writing questions correctly. Don't lose sight of the difference.
Because the SAT is such a well-standardized test, we know that it will only use a few consistent grammar
issues on any test. So let's begin by going through a list of the main issues that you'll encounter, with
brief explanations and examples of how to recognize them and look for the correct phrasing. I have
deliberately avoided explaining things in a classical grammatical framework, because people who are
already familiar with the ideas of classical grammar probably don't need to read this in the first place. If
you’re reading this, it's probably because your grasp of English grammar is a little lacking, so I'll explain
everything as non-grammatically as I possibly can.
Subject-verb agreement
One of the College Board's favorite issues to trick you with has to do with subject-verb agreement.
Luckily, this is one of the easiest issues to recognize and correct.
When a subject and verb agree correctly, it means that the verb ends in a single “-s” if the subject is
singular, and that it ends in something else if the subject is plural. That probably sounds a little
complicated, but it really isn't. Let's take a look at an example:
"The box lies on the floor."
In that sentence, the subject is the word "box," which is singular, because there is only one box. And the
verb, which is "lies," ends in -s, just like we would expect. But if the word "box" were to become plural,
then the sentence would have to look like this:
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"The boxes lie on the floor."
When the plural word "boxes" is used, then we have to change the verb to match it.
Don't sweat this too much. If you speak English well enough to take the SAT in the first place, you can
just feel when the subject and the verb agree correctly if it's brought to your attention. So the challenging
thing can sometimes be making sure that you do pay attention to the issue. The College Board knows
this, and it uses a very simple, very repetitive trick to try to keep you from noticing when a subject and its
verb don't agree.
Basically, that trick involves putting a lot of words between the subject and its verb. Usually, when the
subject and the verb are right next to each other, it's very obvious if they match up or not. But when a lot
of words appear between them, you might get distracted and not notice that they don't match.
For instance, the SAT might give you an *incorrect* sentence like this:
"The box of toys that my aunts bought for my cousins *are* on the floor."
Do you see how that sentence puts a lot of words between the subject ("box") and the verb ("are")? Do
you see how a lot of people will just look at the word that's right next to the “are” (which is "cousins") and
think that everything is okay, because that word is plural and the verb is plural?
But the correct sentence would look like this:
"The box of toys that my aunts bought for my cousins is on the floor."
The reason is that the singular subject "box" still requires the singular verb "is," no matter how many
words come between them.
So one thing that you always need to look out for is when a subject is separated from a verb by a lot of
words.
If you're not comfortable thinking in terms of subjects and verbs, then think about it like this: if one of the
underlined words is some sort of action, look through the sentence to see which word is doing that action,
and put the two words together in your mind to make sure they sound okay. If they don't, then you are
looking at an issue that has to be fixed.
Improper comparisons
You are very likely to see an improper comparison or two on the SAT. When it comes to comparisons,
the key thing to remember is this: you can only compare two things if they are of the same kind.
For instance, on the SAT, you can say something like this:
"Modern music is much better than music from the 17th century."
This sentence is okay because it's comparing "modern music" to "music from the 17th century." Both of
the phrases being compared involve the word "music," so the comparison is being made between two
things of the same kind.
But this sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"Modern music is much better than *the 17th century*."
In that second sentence, the two things being compared are the "music" and the "century." These are not
two things of the same kind, which means that the comparison is improper.
So, on the SAT, whenever you see any sort of comparison or contrast between two things, make sure
that the two things are of the same kind.
Improper comparisons, part two

Also be on the lookout for redundant comparatives or superlatives. Something like this is okay:
"I am stronger now than I ever was."
Something like this is *incorrect*:
"I am *more stronger* now than I ever was."
Improper comparisons, part three

Finally, when it comes to comparisons on the SAT, remember that the "-er" form of an adjective is only for
comparing two things, while the "-est" form of an adjective is for comparing three or more things. So this
is okay:
"Jamie's right arm is the stronger of his two arms."
But this is *incorrect*:
"Jamie's right arm is the *strongest* of his two arms."
Pronouns
On the SAT, we have to be especially careful of these words:
• he • her • these
• she • this • those
• it • that
• him • they
Whenever you see any of those words in an underlined portion of an SAT sentence, you should
automatically search through the rest of the sentence to see if you can find another word that is being
replaced by the word from the list above.
If you can't find another word that's being replaced by the underlined word, then that sentence is wrong as
far as the SAT is concerned.
Even if you can find another word that's being replaced by the underlined word, you are still not out of the
woods yet. Now you have to check and make sure that the word being replaced is a good match with the
word doing the replacing.
In other words, a sentence like this would be okay:
"Few tests are as easy to beat as those put out by the College Board."
This is fine because the word "those" is plural, and it's referring to the plural word "tests." No problems
there.
But a sentence like this would be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"Few tests are as easy to beat as *that* put out by the College Board."
The problem here is that the word "that" is singular, but it's referring to the word "tests," which is plural,
and this can’t happen on the SAT.
Multiple people becoming one thing

One thing that the College Board likes to try to trick you with is the idea of multiple people becoming one
thing. For instance, a sentence might describe three children who all want to become "*an astronaut*,"
instead of becoming "astronauts."
So this one is pretty easy to catch. Whenever you see a sentence about becoming something or wanting
to be something, make sure that the sentence isn't talking about more than one thing becoming one thing.
For instance, a sentence like this is okay on the SAT:
"My brother wants to become a hairdresser."
But a sentence like this would be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"My four brothers all want to become *a hairdresser*."
Instead, we should write this sentence so that the four people are all becoming multiple things instead of
one thing:
"My four brothers all want to become hairdressers."
Be careful here, though. Multiple people actually can sometimes become one thing, if that thing involves
multiple parts. A sentence like this would be correct:
"My four brothers all want to form a hairdressing team, and travel the world in search of adventure."
In that sentence, even though the "four brothers" are becoming only one "team," it's okay because a
"team" has multiple members by definition.
Parallelism
On its own, this concept can be a little hard to nail down exactly, but that's part of the beauty of the SAT:
you don't actually have to understand everything about parallelism in order to answer parallelism
questions correctly on a multiple-choice test.
Basically, all you need to understand about parallelism is this: whenever possible, anything in an
underlined portion of a sentence on an SAT writing section should be in the same form as anything else
that it’s being compared to, ordered with, or otherwise tied to.
So, for instance, when you have three things in a list on the SAT, all three things need to have the same
ending. That means this sentence is correct:
"Lucretia grew tired of scrubbing, washing, and sweeping the floors."
That sentence is okay because the three words in the list ("scrubbing, washing, and sweeping") all have
the same ending ("-ing").
But, on the SAT, this sentence would be *incorrect*:
"Lucretia grew tired of scrubbing, washing, and *sweep* the floors."
The problem here is that the first two words in the series are parallel to one another in their endings, while
the last word in the series is not parallel.
Also be on the lookout for a lack of parallelism whenever you see things being compared to one another
on the SAT. The things being compared also need to have similar endings.
So, for instance, this would be okay on the SAT:
"Keeping quiet is much easier than apologizing."
Again, this is fine because the two things being compared ("keeping" and "apologizing") have parallel
endings ("-ing"). But this would be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"*To keep* quiet is much easier than apologizing."
That second sentence would destroy the parallelism between "keeping" and "apologizing."
By the way, parallelism can also be an issue in questions that involve coordinating conjunctions.
Adjectives and adverbs

Every once in a while, approximately once or twice per test, the College Board will ask you a question
that involves the proper usage of adverbs as opposed to adjectives.
In case you've forgotten, an adjective is a word that describes a noun, and the adverb form of an
adjective is used to describe anything that is not a noun.
So when you see a descriptive word in an underlined portion of an SAT question, look at the words next
to it it and see if either one is a place or a thing. If it is a place or thing, then the descriptive word should
be in its normal adjective state. But if the words are anything else, then the descriptive word should be in
its adverb form (on the SAT, this will almost always be a form that ends in "-ly").
So, for example, this sentence is correct:
"I don't like big parties."
That's fine, because the adjective "big" comes in front of the word "parties," and parties are things.
This sentence would also be correct:
"I don't like extremely big parties."
In this case, the adjective "big" is still fine, because it's coming in front of the noun "parties." And the
word "extremely," which comes in front of the adjective, is in its adverb form, like it should be.
This sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"I don't like *extreme* big parties."
In this case, the word "extreme" appears in its regular adjective form, but the word after it is not a noun,
so the adjective form is incorrect.
By the way, the following sentence would actually be grammatically okay, even though it sounds a little
awkward:
"I don't like extreme, big parties."
In this version, the comma between the two adjectives tells us that they are both to be applied to the noun
"parties." Without the comma, we would have the situation from the previous sentence, in which
"*extreme*" would be incorrectly modifying "big" instead of "parties."
But don't worry about this, because the SAT does not test you on this particular bit of comma usage. I
only wanted to explain it so you wouldn't be confused. (The only comma-related issue that will appear in
the SAT writing section has to do with comma splices.)
Comma splices
A run-on sentence is what you get when you join two groups of words that could each be a sentence on
their own with just a comma. The correct way to join two sentences like that is either with a semicolon or
with both a comma and a conjunction.
(By the way, on the SAT, the easiest way to know if a group of words could be a sentence or not, without
resorting to grammar, is just to read the words and make sure that they include some kind of action and
something doing that action. You also need to make sure that the group of words does not start with a
conjunction.)
A sentence like this would be correct on the SAT:
"Jennifer counted the stars, and she dreamed of home."
This sentence would also be correct on the SAT:
"Jennifer counted the stars; she dreamed of home."
In the first sentence, "and she dreamed of home" could not be a sentence by itself, because it begins with
the conjunction "and." This means it's okay to join that phrase to the rest of the sentence with a comma.
In the second sentence, both "Jennifer counted the stars" and "she dreamed of home" could be
sentences by themselves, which is why they have to be joined together with a semicolon.
"Jennifer counted the *stars; and* she dreamed of home."
That's no good, because a semicolon cannot join two ideas on the SAT if one of them starts with a
conjunction.
This sentence would also be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"Jennifer counted the *stars, she* dreamed of home."
This time, the sentence uses a comma to separate two groups of words that could each be a sentence by
themselves.
So whenever you see a comma or a semicolon in an underlined portion of an SAT writing question, check
to make sure that the semicolon is being used to separate things that could stand on their own as
sentences, and that the comma is not being used that way.
Prepositions
Prepositions can be involved in several of the more difficult questions on the SAT writing section. Before
I can explain which issues you need to look for, I’ll probably need to explain what a preposition actually is.
Without understanding grammar, it can be hard to grasp all the ways that prepositions can be used. But,
as we’ve noted above, a thorough grasp of grammatical concepts is not necessary on the SAT. When it
comes to this part of the SAT, you need to be aware that the prepositions that will appear on the SAT
tend to be short words (less than 5 letters long). The major prepositions you want to be aware of are
these:
• to • from • in
• of • by
When you see any of these words in an underlined portion of an SAT question, you need to pay attention,
and make sure the usage sounds natural to you.
Unfortunately, when it comes to usage that "sounds natural" to the College Board, there aren't really any
hard and fast rules that are worth taking the time to memorize, for three reasons:
1. First, there are probably thousands and thousands of specific idiomatic usages of prepositions in
English. Memorizing all of them would be extremely difficult, even assuming that you could find a
reliable list to memorize from, which you probably can't.
2. Second, there aren't a lot of SAT writing questions that will hinge on these prepositions. Even
though almost every SAT writing sentence will involve prepositions, remember that there can only
be one incorrect grammatical usage per question in the Identifying Sentence Errors questions, so
if you can identify an error somewhere else, you don't need to worry about the prepositions; with
the Improving Sentences questions, you can rely on the three standards from my free video
module 7-6 to carry most of the weight.
3. Third, you'll probably find that you already have a pretty good sense of many of those idiomatic
usages that will appear on the SAT if you just start paying attention to them, so a lot of any
memorization you might do would just be redundant.
So the best way to approach these questions is through a little practice with real SAT questions written by
the College Board. Whenever you come across a question that involves a preposition issue, pay
attention to what the questions show you about the proper ways to use prepositions on the College
Board's test. In very little time, you'll build up an extremely reliable instinct about which prepositions are
appropriate in which contexts. (Not that you needed it, but this is one more excellent reason why you
should only prepare with authentic SAT questions written by the College Board. Questions prepared by
third parties may not use these prepositions in exactly the right way, which will only cause you to develop
bad habits.)
As an example of the type of issues you might see, take a look at a sentence like this, which would be
correct on the SAT:
"He was so preoccupied with his SAT preparation that he completely forgot to go to the prom."
That sentence is fine because "preoccupied with" is an acceptable idiomatic usage of the preposition
"with." But this sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:
"He was so preoccupied *on* his SAT preparation that he completely forgot to go to the prom."
That second sentence is flawed because the preposition "on" can't be paired with the word "preoccupied"
on the SAT.
These prepositional issues can be very subtle, which is why most students find it easiest to approach
them instinctively rather than by memorizing things explicitly. On top of that, you’ll only see them come
up in 1 or 2 questions per test.
Correlative conjunctions
Two more important issues on the SAT writing section are related to correlative conjunctions, which are
stock phrases that are used to link ideas in easily recognizable ways.
The first type of issue that you will see involves nothing more than getting the correlative conjunction right
in the first place. In order to address these types of questions, you should be familiar with the following
correlative conjunctions:
• both . . . and • either . . . or • as . . . as

• not only . . . but also • neither . . . nor
• not . . . but • whether . . . or
In order for a conjunction from that list to be used correctly, each individual phrase in must appear in a
sentence intact. If one or two of the words is changed or missing, then you have a problem that needs to
be corrected.
For instance, the following sentence would be fine on the SAT:
"You can search all you want, but you'll find neither pens nor pencils in the dumpster behind the
cafeteria."
This sentence is fine because it correctly pairs the word "neither" with the word "nor" to create the
correlative conjunction "neither . . . nor."
"You can search all you want, but you'll find neither pens *or* pencils in the dumpster behind the
cafeteria."
This sentence is wrong because "neither . . . or" is not a recognized correlative conjunction, so you can't
pair "neither" with "or."
The second type of issue that you might encounter on the SAT in relation to correlative conjunctions has
to do with the fact that correlative conjunctions require parallelism in the things that they join. In other
words, the things that are joined by a correlative conjunction should look like each other as much as
possible from a grammatical standpoint.
So a sentence like this would be fine on the SAT:
"Students come to school not only by bicycle, but also by car."
This is fine because the correlative conjunction "not only . . . but also" is linking the phrases "by foot" and
"by car," which have similar grammatical structures because they both pair a noun with the preposition
"by."
"Students come to school not only by bicycle, but *also car*."
In this sentence, the word "foot" is the object of the preposition "by," but the word "car" is not the object of
any preposition, which means that the correlative conjunction "not only . . . but also" is trying to join two
things that are in different grammatical forms, which is not allowed on the SAT.
Closing
This document has deliberately ignored a few minor grammatical issues that can occasionally appear on
the test. I do this because, in my experience, the vast majority of students just “feel” the right was to
handle those issues without further explanation; in some cases, explaining some of those issues only
causes students to doubt themselves and start missing questions that they would have answered
correctly otherwise.
Remember that the best way to approach these issues is not to try to memorize them. Instead, look them
over and get a feel for them; let them influence your instincts. Then practice with some real SAT
questions written by the College Board, and refer to this document as necessary when you need help
understanding why a particular phrasing is correct or incorrect on the SAT.
After you've done that for a little while, you'll begin to develop very good instincts about what the test
punishes and what it rewards, and you'll instinctively know which answer choices to select on real SAT
questions written by the College Board.
In that way, you'll find that you can quickly improve your SAT writing score without having to memorize all
kinds of grammatical concepts that won't appear on the test anyway.
Also, let me just say one last time that it’s essential that you only practice with real SAT questions written
by the College Board. If you waste time with other companies’ practice questions, I guarantee you that
you’ll spend time learning grammar that won’t appear on the actual SAT, and you’ll also fail to cover some
things that do appear on the test. I’ve seen other companies’ questions cover all kinds of things that the
SAT ignores completely.
If you’d like to see my approach applied to every single real SAT Writing Multiple-Choice question in the
College Board’s Official SAT Study Guide, you can do that very easily at my web site,
www.mysterytutorvault.com. In addition to those solutions, that web site also has a wide range of useful
tools for anybody trying to get into college. Take a look at it.

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Free SAT Writing

"The box lies on the floor."

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"The boxes lie on the floor."

But the correct sentence would look like this:

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But this sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:

"Modern music is much better than *the 17th century*."

Improper comparisons, part two

"I am stronger now than I ever was."

Something like this is *incorrect*:

"I am *more stronger* now than I ever was."

Improper comparisons, part three

"Jamie's right arm is the stronger of his two arms."

But this is *incorrect*:

"Jamie's right arm is the *strongest* of his two arms."

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In other words, a sentence like this would be okay:

But a sentence like this would be *incorrect* on the SAT:

Multiple people becoming one thing

For instance, a sentence like this is okay on the SAT:

"My brother wants to become a hairdresser."

But a sentence like this would be *incorrect* on the SAT:

"My four brothers all want to become *a hairdresser*."

"My four brothers all want to become hairdressers."

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"Lucretia grew tired of scrubbing, washing, and sweeping the floors."

But, on the SAT, this sentence would be *incorrect*:

"Lucretia grew tired of scrubbing, washing, and *sweep* the floors."

So, for instance, this would be okay on the SAT:

"Keeping quiet is much easier than apologizing."

"*To keep* quiet is much easier than apologizing."

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Adjectives and adverbs

So, for example, this sentence is correct:

"I don't like big parties."

This sentence would also be correct:

"I don't like extremely big parties."

This sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:

"I don't like *extreme* big parties."

"I don't like extreme, big parties."

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A sentence like this would be correct on the SAT:

"Jennifer counted the stars, and she dreamed of home."

This sentence would also be correct on the SAT:

"Jennifer counted the stars; she dreamed of home."

But this sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:

"Jennifer counted the *stars; and* she dreamed of home."

This sentence would also be *incorrect* on the SAT:

"Jennifer counted the *stars, she* dreamed of home."

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• both . . . and • either . . . or • as . . . as

For instance, the following sentence would be fine on the SAT:

But this sentence would be *incorrect* on the SAT:

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But this sentence would be incorrect on the SAT:

"Modern music is much better than the 17th century."

Something like this is incorrect:

"I am more stronger now than I ever was."

But this is incorrect:

"Jamie's right arm is the strongest of his two arms."

But a sentence like this would be incorrect on the SAT:

But a sentence like this would be incorrect on the SAT:

"My four brothers all want to become a hairdresser."

But, on the SAT, this sentence would be incorrect:

"Lucretia grew tired of scrubbing, washing, and sweep the floors."

"To keep quiet is much easier than apologizing."

This sentence would be incorrect on the SAT:

"I don't like extreme big parties."

But this sentence would be incorrect on the SAT:

"Jennifer counted the stars; and she dreamed of home."

This sentence would also be incorrect on the SAT:

"Jennifer counted the stars, she dreamed of home."

But this sentence would be incorrect on the SAT:

But this sentence would be incorrect on the SAT:

"Students come to school not only by bicycle, but also car."