Grammar: Common Error Patterns

Subject-Verb Agreement

Rules

• Singular subject → Singular verb
• Plural subject → Plural verb
• Collective nouns: Usually singular (team is, committee has)
• Neither/Either: Singular verb
• Each/Every: Singular verb

Examples

• ❌ Neither of the boys are coming
• ✅ Neither of the boys is coming

Pronoun Errors

Agreement

• Pronoun must agree with antecedent in number and gender
• ❌ Everyone should bring their book
• ✅ Everyone should bring his/her book (or use 'their' if acceptable)

Ambiguous Reference

• ❌ John told Mike that he was wrong (who is wrong?)
• ✅ John told Mike, "You are wrong"

Tense Consistency

• Maintain same tense unless time changes
• ❌ He went to the store and buys milk
• ✅ He went to the store and bought milk

Modifiers

Misplaced Modifier

• ❌ I saw a man with a telescope walking
• ✅ I saw a man walking with a telescope

Dangling Modifier

• ❌ Running quickly, the finish line was crossed
• ✅ Running quickly, he crossed the finish line

Parallelism

• Items in a list must have same structure
• ❌ I like reading, writing, and to swim
• ✅ I like reading, writing, and swimming

Idioms

• Prefer to (not prefer than)
• Different from (not different than)
• Compared to/with
• Between (two), Among (more than two)

CAT Strategy

• Read sentence aloud mentally
• Check subject-verb agreement first
• Look for pronoun ambiguity
• Verify parallelism in lists