Standard English Conventions

According to the College Board, Standard English Conventions questions "test your ability to edit passages for conventional sentence structure, usage, and punctuation."

If the question for problems in this domain is always phrased exactly the same way, then how do we identify what subtypes of problems we're looking at within the domain? To identify what particular types of rules or conventions a problem is testing, we want to look at the answer choices.

Once you've identified that you're looking at a Standard English Conventions question, go straight to the answer choices. Try to identify what is different between the answer choices.

• Different Pronouns
  • The answer choices are mostly the same, but they each use a different pronoun.
  • There may also be a verb that differs between answer choices to match the pronoun.
• Apostrophe Placement
  • These answer choices will differ in terms of where they do or don't place apostrophes.
  • They may also differ in plurality and using pronouns vs contractions.
• Question Marks vs Periods
  • Usually, two answer choices will end with question marks, and the other two will end with periods.
• Different Subjects
  • In these you will notice longer answer choices, where the order of the words is very different from one choice to another, and many have different subjects (the noun performing the main verb).
• Punctuation
  • The answer choices are mostly the same, but they use different punctuation, or have the punctuation in different places.
  • You may notice additional minor differences like the presence of a conjunction in some words but not others.
• Verb Form
  • The answer choices all use different forms of the same verb, but otherwise are mostly the same.

While the above patterns get you closer to knowing what you are being tested on, some of these groupings have numerous rules or conventions that they might be testing. We'll teach you all the rules that might fall under each of these categories, and will also teach you a step by step process to ensure you ultimately arrive at the correct answer.