It seems as if it would be very difficult to measure someone’s writing skills without a writing sample, but ETS apparently feels up to the challenge. The writing skills section only includes multiple-choice questions. Luckily, it is much easier to prepare for these kinds of questions than it would be to improve your writing. In fact, preparation for this section is largely a matter of knowing a few key grammar rules and trusting your good instincts about what “sounds” right.

The three different types of questions on the Writing Skills section generally test different types of grammar errors. We’ll cover each particular type of grammar error while discussing the question type in which the error most often occurs.

The first 19 questions in the writing skills section give you a sentence with four underlined words or phrases and ask you to choose which word or phrase, if any, contains an error. Here are the precise instructions, including an example question:

There are several things that you should notice about these instructions. First of all, they are long and fairly involved. Make sure you know what they say before you arrive on test day. Having to read over them to refresh your memory is a waste of a good 40 seconds. Second, notice that you are only allowed to consider making changes to the underlined answer choices. If changing an answer choice would fix the sentence only if you also made changes to another part of the sentence, it is not the correct answer. Finally, you should notice that some sentences do not have errors. In fact, ETS tries to make all the answer choices occur an equal number of times (so random guessing really is random). This equal distribution of answers means that in a 19-question section, answer (E), which means no error, should be the answer three or four times. So if you really don’t think there’s an error in a sentence, you don’t need to nitpick to find one. Answer (E) and move on.

The grammar tested on the PSAT is not very complicated. You don’t have to know how or why something is grammatically incorrect, just that it is, so don’t worry about technical terms. In addition, you will often be able to “hear” the error in many of the sentences. If you feel yourself wince a little when you hit an underlined word, you know you’ve probably found your error. Of course, sometimes the test writers arrange a sentence so that the error is harder to find. To help you out when that happens, we’ve broken down the kinds of grammatical errors the PSAT most often tests .

If the error in a sentence is a noun, it is almost definitely because the noun does not agree in number with some other part of the sentence. For example:

The sentence clearly refers to a number of people through the words: “women,” “they,” and “their.” But a group of people cannot share a single temper. (A) is the correct answer because “temper” should be plural.

Verbs can be incorrect if they are in the wrong person or are in the wrong tense.

Verbs in the wrong person don’t agree with their subjects, which you’ll immediately recognize as long as the subject and verb are close together in the sentence. Frequently, however, a long phrase or clause will come between the subject and the verb, making it harder to identify the problem. For example:

This sentence tries to trick you by inserting the prepositional phrase “of my very favorite professional baseball player” between the subject of the sentence and its verb. The subjects of this sentence are “the brother and sister.” Plural subjects should take a plural verb. Does cannot take a plural subject, so the correct answer is (B). When you see prepositional phrases on the writing skills section, you should be wary. Always remember to check for agreement, not with the noun that happens to come just before the verb but with the verb’s actual subject.

Verb agreement can be especially confusing if the subject is a collective noun or a pronoun. For example, the sentence “Our group of friends are going out together tonight,” is incorrect even though it might sound fine to your ear. If you find yourself in doubt, read the subject and verb without the intervening phrases and see how it sounds: “Our group are going out,” is clearly incorrect, and should be “Our group is going out.”

To know a verb is in the wrong person, you need to look at its subject. You can decide if a verb is in the wrong tense by looking at another verb in the sentence. If two verbs are in different tenses for no apparent reason, the underlined one is probably in the wrong tense. For example:

Here, you know that the whole sentence should be in the present tense because “wears” is in the present and isn’t underlined. For that reason, had, which is in the past tense, is incorrect, and (A) is the right answer.

Another way to check for tense is to find words or phrases that put the sentence in a certain time period. “Yesterday” indicates that the sentence should be in the past tense, while “in the year 2045” tells you that the sentence should be in the future tense. Use these clues to your advantage whenever the test writers offer them.

The PSAT tests pronoun errors in three ways. A pronoun will either not agree with its antecedent, be in the wrong case, or will not be sufficiently specific. Since there are so many issues to consider, pronouns can be pretty tricky. If you have a sentence with no obvious error and one of the answer choices is a pronoun, you should take extra care to make sure the pronoun is being used correctly.

To check for pronoun agreement, you must correctly identify the antecedent, the noun that the pronoun replaces. Once you know what the pronoun is supposed to replace, it’s fairly simple to see whether it’s the correct pronoun to use. For example:

In this sentence, the pronoun “his” refers back to “Jonathon and Michael,” but “their” is the correct possessive pronoun to replace both people. (D) is the correct answer.

The slightly sneakier way of making a pronoun disagree is to switch pronouns mid-sentence. For example:

In this sentence, the pronoun changes from “one” to “you”—from the third person to the second—causing a disagreement.

Another kind of improper pronoun shift occurs when two pronouns disagree in number:

“Their” is plural, but its antecedent, “a powerful person,” is singular. The correct pronoun in place of “their” should be “his” or “his or her.” These rules may seem confusing, but as long as you remember that pronouns must agree with their antecedents and be consistent within the sentence, you should not have trouble finding pronoun errors.

You may not have formally studied cases in school, but if you’ve ever deliberated about whether to use “who” or “whom” or “I” or “me,” you are familiar with the issue. A pronoun’s case is determined by whether it functions in the sentence as a subject or an object. A pronoun is a subject if there is some verb that it is the subject of (She called), and it is an object if something is being done to it (Call her) or if it is the object of a preposition (He called out to her). Here is a basic pronoun case error:

In this sentence, (D) is the correct answer because “I” is the object of the preposition “for,” so it should be in the objective case, which is “me.” If you read the sentence without the “you and,” “save two seats for I” just sounds wrong. In fact, case errors often involve two pronouns like this because the first acts like a buffer and makes the sentence sound more correct. So when you see two pronouns together, you should make sure that they are in the correct case.

Below is a sentence with a very sneaky case error:

At first it seems like “him” would be the correct pronoun to use since it is not acting as the subject of any verb in the sentence. This sentence “sounds” correct to most people’s ears. But it is wrong because when you make a comparison between two things, they must be equivalent to each other. Therefore, “I” must have a first-person equivalent, which is “he.” As it stands now, this sentence literally reads:

Pronouns replace nouns. But for a pronoun to be grammatically correct, it must be clear which noun a pronoun is replacing. In other words, the pronoun must be specific, referring only to a single noun in the sentence. Determining whether a pronoun is specific is not very difficult. Simply ask yourself if you can tell what or whom the pronoun is replacing. Here is an example of vague pronoun use:

“She” is clearly the pronoun in this sentence. But to whom does “she” refer? Who is picking whom up from the airport? The sentence gives you no clues as to whether “she” is Sarah or Hannah, so you know that the pronoun has been used incorrectly. This sort of error is fairly easy to spot once you know to look for it. The trick is remembering to check in the first place. Unlike most other grammatical errors, vague pronouns don’t make the sentence sound wrong on the first read, so they are easy to miss. Remember, whenever you see a sentence about two men, two women, or two groups, be on the lookout for a vague pronoun.

Adjectives are words that describe nouns. Adverbs are words that describe everything else (verbs, adjectives, other adverbs). If you see a modifier and can’t tell whether it is an adverb or an adjective, ask yourself some questions. Is the word adding some detail to a noun? If so, the word is an adjective.

Bird is a noun. Blue is an adjective because it describes how the bird is.

Is the word providing added detail to a verb, or is it describing the degree to which an adjective is describing a noun?

“Loudly” and “extremely” are adverbs. “Loudly” describes the verb “sang,” while “extremely” explains the degree to which the bird was blue.

You can also often tell adverbs and adjectives apart from their endings: adverbs generally end in the letters “–ly.” Adjectives will never end in those letters. Some adverbs, such as the word “very,” do not end in “–ly,” though, so this method is not foolproof.

Sometimes the PSAT will present you with a sentence in which a word that should be an adjective is written in adverb form or vice versa. Want an example? You got it.

“Light” is being used in this sentence to describe the verb “fell,” so it should be in adverb form: “lightly.” This type of error is not conceptually difficult to understand, but it can be hard to hear the error as you read through the sentence. So if you get a sentence with no obvious error and a modifier as an answer choice, take a second to make sure the modifier is in the correct form.

When a sentence contains a linking verb (a linking verb is a verb that does not express action) such as “is,” “seems,” “feels,” or “tastes,” it can be trickier to figure out whether a modifier should be an adjective or adverb. For example, consider this sentence:

This sentence looks and sounds correct. The modifier is next to the verb and seems to be modifying the verb, so it is correct that it should be an adverb, right? Well, no. Let’s define what this sentence is trying to say: “this fish does not have the flavor that it is expected a fish should have.” The modifier, therefore, shouldn’t describe the verb. It should describe the noun. It is the fish that seems odd, not the actual tasting of the fish. (If the person were trying to taste the fish by putting the fish in his ear, then the tasting of fish would be odd.) One good way to test out whether a sentence with a linking verb has the correct modifier is to replace the linking verb with the verb “is.”

Now it’s clear that the modifier is incorrect and the sentence should be “This fish is odd” or “This fish tastes odd.” However, there is an extra complication. Let’s go back to the example of the fish sentence.

What if the three sentences before this sentence described how the fish tasted things by putting those things in its ear? Then, as the context indicates, the fish actually goes about tasting things oddly: the fish tastes oddly. In this instance, because of the context of the surrounding sentences, “tastes” functions as an action verb rather than a linking verb. Here’s another example. It is correct to say “My horse does not smell good” and “My horse does not smell well,” if you are referring in the first case to its odor and in the second to its inability to distinguish scents. When you see a sentence of this sort, you have to use the context of the sentence to decide if the verb somehow names an action or if it acts like an “is” between the subject and the modifier.

Determining whether a verb is acting as an action verb or a linking verb can sometimes be tricky, which means that figuring out whether a modifier should be an adjective or an adverb can also be tricky. The key is to figure out what the sentence means and then to decide if that meaning necessitates that the noun be modified or the verb be modified. Also, the PSAT does not test linking verbs very often.

Another type of modifier error is the double negative, the kind of rule that people intuitively understand but often cannot explain well. Why, these people wonder, is it fine to say, “I never said that you were not tall enough,” but not “I never not said what you think I said”? The answer is this: it’s not wrong to have two negating words in a sentence as long as they modify different verbs. In the first sentence “never” modifies the word “said,” while “not” modifies the word “were.” In the second sentence, both “never” and “not” modify the verb “said.”

Here’s an example of how the PSAT might test your knowledge of double negatives:

This sentence is tricky because you might not immediately recognize “barely” as a negative, but it is, as are “hardly” and “scarcely.” Because “barely” and “not” modify the same verb, the sentence has a double negative. Do not worry about whether removing or changing barely would change the meaning of the sentence (whatever it means in the first place); you only need to know that removing or changing it would make the sentence grammatically correct.

The last major area of grammar that you need to check for in these sentences is parallel structure. For example, if a sentence contains several verbs in a series, they should all be conjugated in the same form. Look at this example of a nonparallel series:

The error in this sentence is subtle. All the verbs in the series are controlled by the “to” that comes immediately before “clean,” so the “to” before “send” is unnecessary and incorrect. The sentence as written actually reads:

Obviously that double “to to” before “send a letter to my grandmother” is a problem.

Often sentence errors involving nonparallel structure will be more obvious than in this example because the verb form in the series will change from an infinitive (to walk) to a gerund (running).

In this sentence, “calling Gary” should stick out at you like a sore thumb. The first two parts of the series involve infinitive verbs, while the third is a gerund.

We’ll use the term “usage” for all language questions that are not settled by general rules of grammar. Often these errors are really just a matter of word choice—using the correct preposition or not confusing two words that sound very similar.

Here are the three most common types of usage errors tested by the PSAT.

A given context requires using one preposition over another without a steadfast rule, and the PSAT likes to capitalize on the confusion this can cause. Try this example:

In this sentence, the correct answer choice is (C). The verb “to discuss” should not be followed by any preposition, so “of” is used incorrectly here.

Hopefully you can just hear this kind of error when you read a sentence. If you can’t, look for other errors in the sentence. If you can decide that either the sentence is correct or the preposition is wrong, you are in a very good position to guess.

Discrete nouns are used for things that can be counted (cars, people, dollars). “Fewer” and “many” are good examples of discrete terms. Mass nouns are appropriate when the thing cannot be counted (soup, snow, praise). “Less” and “much” are typical mass nouns. To illustrate, the following example contains an error of number or amount terms:

(B) is the correct answer choice for this question. Children can certainly be counted, so the sentence should read that Bob has “fewer” children than Jim. These kinds of questions can be tricky because lots of people confuse these parts of speech in everyday usage. But if you remember the rule, you should be fine. Just remember to be on the lookout when one of these words is an underlined choice.

Every so often, by using a word that sounds like a word that would be correct, the test writers will create a sentence error that you almost certainly will not hear. For example:

The correct answer choice for this question is (C). When used as a verb, “effect” means to achieve, which clearly makes this sentence meaningless. The word that should be used is “affect,” which means to alter or influence. Other commonly confused words pairs include accept/except, then/than, insure/ensure, conscious/conscience, and patients/patience.

You will almost always know what both words of a confused word pair mean. The key to not missing these errors is reading the sentence slowly and being suspicious of any possible word confusion if you do not find other errors.

After the sentence error identification questions, you will find 14 sentence improvement questions. In these questions, all or part of the sentence will be underlined, and you must choose the best rewording of that portion based on rules of grammar and usage. Here are the exact instructions given for these questions:

Notice that answer choice (A) is always identical to the original sentence. It is the equivalent of answer choice (E) on the sentence error identification questions. Something else you might learn from the sample question they provide is that by the time you get to the correct answer (in this case (D) is the right choice), you may have forgotten what you are looking for. It’s a good idea to try to fix the sentence in your mind before you look at the answer choices. It can also be helpful to write down a key word or two. In this case, you might have written “is” to remind you that you need a conjugated verb at the beginning of your answer. Finally, make sure you read an answer choice all the way through before choosing it. Sometimes an answer choice will fix the error in the sentence but introduce a new one, just like (B) in this example.

The kinds of errors you will find in this type of question usually involve sentence structure. You might also encounter and need to correct the kinds of grammatical errors that we discussed in the previous section, but those errors will occur in addition to the structural problem. In this section, we isolate seven kinds of structural problems and show you how to deal with each one.

Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences. A sentence fragment can fail as a sentence in one of two ways. It might not contain a subject, or it might not contain a properly conjugated verb. To correct this kind of error, typically you will just have to change a clause into an independent sentence. For example:

Note that the sentence fragment is the entire supposed sentence, from “The advertising agency” to “for major corporations.” You can fix the sentence fragment by changing the underlined portion of the sentence. This particular sentence is incorrect in its original form because there is no verb that corresponds to “The advertising agency.” The only answer choice that fixes this problem without introducing a new error is (C). Answer (C) eliminates the clause that begins with “which” and connects the subject—the advertising agency—to its characteristics in a single correct sentence.

Run-on sentences try to say too much. There are two effective ways to fix a run-on sentence. Either you can split the sentence into two sentences by using a period or semi-colon, or you can connect the two disparate ideas in the sentence through the use of a conjunction such as “and.”

The answer choices in this example hint at the many ways you can fix a run-on sentence. In (B), the answer choices are linked by “and,” which would have worked had the independent sentences not been changed into dependent clauses through the inclusion of the comma. Answer choice (D) tries to use a semi-colon to join the thoughts, but again, one of the sentences has been changed into a dependent clause because the verb “have” is incorrectly conjugated. (E) is the correct answer since it successfully makes the second part of the sentence dependent upon the first.

When making comparisons, it is important to use the same kind of things. You can compare oranges and apples or an orange’s color to an apple’s color but you can’t compare an orange’s color to an apple. If this kind of error appears in a sentence, only one object of comparison will be underlined, so it is your job to find the answer choice that includes an appropriate second object of comparison. Look at the following example:

The original sentence compares Picasso’s technique to Matisse himself, which is not a legitimate comparison. The answer choice must change the comparison so that it refers to Matisse’s use of color. Only answer (C) accomplishes this task. The best way to approach this kind of question is to decide before looking at the answer choices how you would change the sentence.

In the section on sentence error identification, we explained how the PSAT might use single word modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) incorrectly. In sentence improvement questions, with their focus on structural issues, the test might misplace an entire modifying clause so that it no longer describes what was intended. Modifying clauses must immediately precede or follow the noun that they describe. For example:

The modifying phrase “flying high in the sky” is clearly meant to describe the kite, since boys do not typically fly. The grammar of the original sentence, however, implies that Martin is the one flying. The correct answer fixes this problem without changing the original intended meaning of the sentence. Both (B) and (E) structure the sentence so that the participial phrase describes the kite, but (E) changes the meaning by making the kite be thrilled by Martin instead of the other way around. Therefore, (B) is your correct answer.

Sometimes the original sentence in a question will not contain any specific error, but it will be worded so poorly that it needs to be changed. You might think that this sort of error is unfair because it requires you to make a judgment call. But don’t worry: the original sentence will be so awful and the improved one will be so clearly better that these questions turn out to be quite easy. Take a look at this example to see what we mean:

Hopefully, you know just by reading the answer choices that the correct answer is (D)—all the other choices are hopelessly awkward. If, however, you didn’t think the answer was really clear, you could at least eliminate some answer choices for other reasons. The pronoun “them” in choice (B) does not clearly refer to anything until the second sentence, which is really too late. The modifying phrase at the beginning of choice (E) is misplaced and refers to the office instead of the people, so you can eliminate that option as well. This leaves you with three answer choices before you even have to start evaluating the awkwardness of each sentence.

The last six questions in the writing skills section are called paragraph improvement. For these questions, you will be asked to read a single passage and answer questions about how to improve its clarity, organization, and grammar. Below are the instructions for this section. Learn them.

Based on the instructions, you should realize that the questions can touch on a pretty broad range of issues. Basically, everything covered in the sentence error identification section and the sentence improvement section is fair game, as are questions about organization and content. You should know that “an early draft of an essay” is code for “a badly written essay,” and that when we say “badly written,” we mean “awful.” There will be many more problems with the essay than can be addressed in six questions. For that reason, your initial read of the passage should be quick, just enough to get the main idea. Do not try to start improving the paragraph before you’ve looked at the questions—that would take way too long.

Here is a sample passage. Look it over. The sample questions that we use in the rest of this section will always refer to this passage:

You should have a grasp of the general idea of the passage—it’s about the First Amendment and its limits. You probably also noticed that there are several big grammatical mistakes throughout the passage. Don’t let those distract you—you will probably only have to answer questions about some of them.

The simplest kind of improving paragraphs question will ask you to revise a particular sentence, given its context in the passage. You should try to improve the diction and flow of the sentence, and also make sure that the answer you choose fits into the passage well. For example:

When approaching this question, you should immediately eliminate any ungrammatical answers. (A) makes the sentence a fragment, and (E) contains a verb that does not agree with its subject, so you can throw these out without even considering their meaning. Now you are left with (B), (C), and (D). To choose among these answer choices, go back to the passage and reread sentences (2) and (3). You will see that sentence (3) further explains what is said in sentence (2). Only choice (C) creates an appropriate link between the two sentences, so it is the correct answer.

Not all questions will require going back and looking at the context of the passage. Sometimes the question will really be a sentence improvement question like the ones we discussed in the previous section. For example:

Since context is irrelevant, you do not have to keep referring back to the passage. Since it can be difficult to know just by looking at the question whether the context is important, you should always check out the grammar first. If you don’t need context, you will be able to eliminate all the incorrect answer choices immediately. If you do need context, you can at least eliminate the grammatically incorrect answer choices before deciding which one also fits well in the passage. The answer to this question, by the way, is (E).

Combining sentences is a lot like revising them, except that you have to take two independent thoughts and combine them. The sentences are almost always closely related, so it should be fairly easy to combine them. Take a look at this sample question:

To answer this question, you need to decide how the two sentences are related and should be combined. You can eliminate (A) because it misconstrues the relationship between the sentences: the writer does not agree that people have a particular opinion; he or she agrees with the people who hold that opinion. Next, you should decide if there are any grammatical problems with the remaining answer choices. (B) and (D) retain the word “this,” which does not have a clear antecedent. You can eliminate those answer choices. Finally, (C) is worded awkwardly, which leaves you only with (E), the correct answer.

These kinds of questions ask you to deal with several different issues and to read rather lengthy answer choices. If you think that you will not be able to answer every question in the writing skills section, you might consider skipping these without really even trying them.

The final type of question in the writing skills section asks you to make decisions about the content of the passage. In some ways, these questions are like reading comprehension, except that you have to think more about what is missing than about what is actually there. Some content questions will ask you about what should come immediately before or after the passage. For example:

Because the passage ends by discussing the “many different contexts” in which the Supreme Court has evaluated First Amendment rights, the next logical topic would be to discuss a particular example. For that reason, (A) is the correct answer. Any of the other choices would cause an abrupt change in the flow of the passage.

Other content questions will ask you how the argument made by the passage could be strengthened:

(B) and (C) are the two answer choices that seem to make the claim more strong. But if you think about it, showing that other rights are not very important does not demonstrate that First Amendment rights have more relative importance. On the other hand, if First Amendment rights are the basis for protecting other rights, then the writer’s claim seems harder to attack. (C) is the correct answer.

The math and verbal sections of the PSAT follow the same order of difficulty as the SAT—the questions get harder as you move through a group, with the exception of the reading comprehension groups. Unfortunately, the writing skills section is not ordered by difficulty. Still, there are ways to use the structure of the writing skills section to your advantage.

You will probably find that you perform better on one type of writing skills question than on others. No matter where those questions are in the section, start with them and rack up some points right off the bat. Then, of the remaining two groups, move to the one about which you feel more confident. Also, keep in mind that you should not give up on a group just because you hit one hard question. Unlike other sections, you do not know if the next question will be as difficult, so a tough question might be followed by a very simple one. Otherwise, you should follow the same general strategies as you would on any other section of the test. Remember not to get bogged down: do not be afraid to skip a question if you have no idea, and guess if you can eliminate even one answer choice. On the error identification and sentence improvement groups, eliminating an answer should be fairly easy. If you sense that the sentence has an error, even if you cannot decide what it is, you can eliminate (E) or (A), respectively, and guess from there.

The biggest tip we can give you for this section is to trust your instincts. If something doesn’t sound right, it probably isn’t. Remember that you do not have to be able to explain your answer, so listening to your gut can get you as many points as being able to explicate complicated grammar rules. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prepare for this section. If you are going to trust your gut, you need to make sure that your gut is trustworthy in the first place.