On the SAT writing section it may be required of test takers to identify sentence errors. This is a little easier than fixing sentence errors because they just have to be spotted. Students should take the entire time given to answer each question. There is a "no error," choice that needs to be thought about carefully before it is checked on the exam. It is thrown in the answer choices to increase the odds of getting the question wrong.
- Do not worry about wordiness in this section. This part of the exam will be all about the mechanics of writing not style.
- Look for subject-verb agreements errors, sentence structure errors and other common misuses of language.
- When a very is underlined, it is a good idea to ask whether the verb tells the right time and whether it agrees with the subject of the sentence in the question.
- When a pronoun is underlines, there will be four possible errors to notice - case, agreement, person and reference. The idea is to quickly figure out if a pronoun used it correct or not.
- Studying a glossary of English usage is a good idea as some questions with usage errors will occur on the exam. For example, the difference between lay and lie.
- When a conjunction is underlined, asking whether there is a fragment is a good idea. Conjunctions are often misused.
- There will be around three or four "no error" questions total. If more than this is gotten, there may be a problem with some of them.
- The easy questions will be in the beginning with more difficult errors later in the exam.
- Keep track of how many "no error" answers come up.
