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The SAT Proofreading and Editing Section: Basic Principles

Learn basic principles behind the proofreading and editing sections of the SAT.

In this article, you will find:

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You're Going on a Grammatical Scavenger Hunt
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
Again, this order is for the average student, which you are not. No matter how good someone is at grammar, he or she undoubtedly has one or more grammatical blind spots. I have my grammatical blind spots—concepts I overlook more than others—and so do you. As you work through this section, become familiar with which grammar categories tend to trip you up and be especially vigilant about them.

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