On this section, as on the other sections, grammar terms are not tested. Spelling is not tested, and, despite what the directions claim, punctuation is not tested either. A basic knowledge of punctuation might help you on some questions, but there are no questions that deal directly with punctuation in this section.

You will not have to master a huge amount of material in order to do well on this section. ETS tests your knowledge of basic grammar, which this chapter will cover. They also test the same basic grammar from year to year, which makes it easier for us to tell you what kind of questions to expect. By carefully studying actual SAT II Writing tests from past years, we have pinpointed exactly what kinds of grammar questions you’ll see on this section. For example, we know you’ll see questions on the passive voice, run-on sentences, and misplaced modifiers; also, you’ll most likely see some questions on parallelism, conjunctions, fragments, gerunds, and coordination/subordination.

Although some of the material in this chapter is new, some of the grammar we’ll discuss will sound familiar, because it’s grammar that ETS also tests on the Identifying Sentence Error questions.