SAT Grammar Rules

SAT Grammar Concept Review
Punctuation
• Commas
o Separate dependent from independent clause
o Between items in lists of 3 or more items
o Separate non-essential phrases/appositives from the rest of the sentence (if phrase
is at the beginning or end of a clause, set off with a comma; if it is in the middle of
the clause, there should be a comma both before and after the phrase)
o After transition words/phrases such as “however”, “therefore”, etc (if word is at the
beginning or end of a clause, set off with a comma; if it is in the middle of the clause,
there should be a comma both before and after the word)
o Between contrasting phrases e.g., “you, not me”
o Between non-essential adjectives where the order does not matter (almost never
tested)
• Semi-colons
o Separate two independent clauses (for the purposes of the SAT, can be treated as
interchangeable with full-stop)
o Between items in lists where one or more of the items have commas (almost never
tested)
• Colons
o Introduce an explanation or effect
o Introduce a list
o Introduce a quote (rarely tested)
§ For all three of the above uses, the colon should be preceded by an
independent clause
• Dashes
o Separate non-essential phrases from the rest of the sentence (for the purposes of
the SAT, can be treated as interchangeable with double commas)
§ cannot be mixed with commas (i.e., if a phrase is set off on one side with
dash, it should be closed off with a dash. If you open with a comma, close
with a comma)
o Introduce explanation or effect
§ Dash should be preceded by an independent clause (for the purposes of the
SAT, can be treated as interchangeable with colon)
• Apostrophes
o Contraction
o Possession
§ Do not confuse possessive pronouns like “their” with contractions like
“they’re”. Definite second and third-person possessive pronouns never have
an apostrophe in them
1
Subject-Verb Agreement
• Compound subjects
o If joined together by “and”, plural
o If joined together by “either/or” or “neither/nor”, refer to the part closest to the
verb to determine if it should be singular or plural
• Collective/Uncountable nouns are largely singular
• Do not let prepositional phrases/modifiers distract you. Always begin the question by asking
yourself who or what in the sentence is logically doing the verb. The correct subject will
generally never be part of a prepositional phrase/modifier
• Indefinite pronouns
o Always singular:
§ Each
§ Every—
§ Some—
§ Any—
§ No—
o Always plural:
§ Many
§ Few
§ Several
o Depends on the prepositional phrase that follows:
§ More/Most
§ Any
§ None
§ Some
§ All
• Portions like fractions (half of…) or percentages (fifty percent of…) depend on the
prepositional phrase (rarely tested)
• “A number of” is plural. “The number of” is singular
2
Pronouns
• Case
o Subject case pronouns are used when the antecedent of the pronoun is the subject
of a verb; object case when the antecedent is the object or part of a prepositional
phrase
o Be careful not to get distracted by compound elements. We use the object case in
“Bob yelled at Tim and me” instead of the subject case “Tim and I” because in the
sentence, “Tim and me” are the objects being yelled at
o “Who” is subject case; “whom” is object case. If you need to guess, the answer is
usually “who”
• Ambiguous/Missing antecedent
o ALL third-person definite pronouns must have a clear and explicitly-stated
antecedent. If the sentence lacks that, default straight to the one answer option that
uses actual nouns instead of pronouns.
• Agreement: make sure all pronouns agree with their antecedent in
o Number
o Gender
o Point of View
Verb Tense (Review the full explanations in your roadmap book)

• Main tenses
o Simple tense
o Perfect tense
o Progressive tense
• The answer is very frequently either a simple tense, or one that you can arrive at by
matching the tenses of the other verbs in the sentence. Do not over think these.
• Verb tense questions are very easily confused with subject-verb agreement questions, as
both questions will have answer options that consist of different conjugations of the same
verb. Some questions will test both concepts together. Always check for subject-verb
agreement first, then, if there are two or more answer options remaining, check tense
3
Parallelism
• Structures that should be parallel
o Lists
§ This is almost always the one that appears in the SAT. Watch for any time a
question is part of a three-item list, and only one of the items is underlined.
Make that item match the other two in structure.
o Paired phrases
o Phrases joined by coordinating conjunctions
• Comparisons must occur between thing to thing, and person to person; never thing to
person
o When a question is placed near a comparative word/phrase (more than, less than,
similar to, unlike, relative to, etc), check the first part of the comparison and make
sure the second part matches.
o That is to say, you want to compare the “song of bird A” to “that of bird B” and not
to bird B itself
Modifiers
• Adjectives vs Adverbs (rarely tested)
• Misplaced/Dangling modifiers
o Watch for any time a question underlines a significant portion of the sentence
directly following an introductory modifier. Ensure that the first word after the
comma setting off the modifier is something that the modifier can actually logically
modify.
o i.e., if your sentence begins with a phrase like “Running swiftly through the woods,”
the first words after the comma need to be someone/something capable of running,
and not something like “the shoelaces of Bob” or “Bob’s shoelaces”.
Miscellaneous
• Avoid options that are unnecessarily wordy, or that repeat information
• Avoid options that are overly informal or formal
• Review slide on common paired phrases and idioms

SAT Grammar Rules

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SAT Grammar Concept Review

Verb Tense (Review the full explanations in your roadmap book)

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