Form, Structure, and Sense

What this skill tests

College Board calls this skill Form, Structure, and Sense. A blank may require a verb form, a pronoun or determiner, a noun or possessive, a modifier, a comparison or parallel structure, or another usage choice. The question asks which form conforms to Standard English in that exact sentence. Some of these are settled by agreement with a word sitting a dozen words away. Others are settled by whether a clause has a tensed verb at all, by whether a noun is plural or possessive, or by what an opening phrase attaches to.

In “Each of the students has their own opinion,” each controls the verb even though students is closer. The chapter's theme is finding the grammatical controller rather than trusting the nearest word.

Name the grammatical job first

Work out what kind of word the blank holds, then run the test that kind of word requires.

• Verb form: does this clause already have a tensed verb, or must the blank supply one?
• Agreement: what is the actual subject of this verb? Set intervening phrases aside.
• Tense and aspect: when does the action sit relative to the rest of the passage? Is it finished, continuing, habitual, or earlier than another past event?
• Noun form: is anything owned, and by one owner or many?
• Pronoun or determiner: what is the antecedent, and is it clear and number-compatible?
• Introductory modifier: what noun phrase does it actually modify?
• Parallel form: what slot does this fill in a series or pair?

The usual distractor in each case is a nearby word that tempts you: a plural noun inside a phrase, a verb in an unrelated clause, a noun that sounds like a possessive, or a subject that reads smoothly but cannot do what the opening phrase says.

Find the true subject

A phrase carrying a noun of the opposite number often stands directly between a subject and its verb. Cross it out and the agreement becomes clear.

• The collection of letters, sent over four decades, is held here. The collection is held. Singular.
• The letters in the collection are held here. Plural.
• Among the papers are three unpublished drawings. The subject follows the verb in an inverted sentence: three drawings are.
• Each of the notebooks has an index of species. Each is singular; so is every with a singular noun.

Phrases opening with of, in, with, along with, together with, as well as, including, or between contain nouns but supply none of them as the subject. A relative clause (who, which, that) has a subject of its own and is not the main clause's subject. The paintings that the museum recently acquired are being restored needs are, because paintings is the subject and the museum belongs to the relative clause. And The lead researcher, together with three graduate assistants, examines the samples stays singular, because the added phrase does not act like and.

Existential there is not the subject: There are several reasons the proposal stalled agrees with reasons.

Quantity expressions

Follow the passage timeline

A tense question is settled by the timeline the passage builds, not by which form sounds best. Time markers are evidence, not commands.

• Since 2015, the museum has digitized two hundred letters. Work that began then and continues needs the present perfect. Notice that since can also mean because, which carries no tense meaning at all.
• In 1961, she sent the first of the letters. A closed date supports the simple past.
• By the time the archive bought the papers, she had died. The past perfect marks one past event as complete before another.
• The archive opens to readers each weekday. A habit or standing state takes the simple present.
• Researchers confirmed that the compound dissolves readily in cold water. A general truth can stay in the present inside a past-tense sentence.

Past perfect is not automatically correct whenever an earlier event is mentioned. Use it only when the earlier-before-later relationship needs marking and simple past would not already do the job. Neighboring verbs usually share a tense unless the meaning requires a real change in time.

Check for a finite main verb

Some questions are settled before tense or agreement arrives, by asking whether the clause has a working verb at all. A finite verb carries tense: records, recorded, has recorded, was recording. An infinitive (to record) and a participle alone (recording, recorded) cannot be the verb of a clause.

Strip the modifying phrases and read what remains. If nothing carries tense, the blank must supply a finite verb and every participle fails. The species, first documented in 1894, ______ across the island needs ranges or is found, because documented lives inside the supplement. If the clause already has its verb, a participle in the blank may be exactly right: The comet passed close to the planet, altering its orbit slightly.

The same word can play different roles by position. Researchers recorded the change uses recorded as the finite verb. The change recorded by researchers was small uses it as a modifier. When the choices mix finite and nonfinite forms (creates, creating, to create, created), the question is about finiteness, not tense.

Pronouns

• Number. A pronoun takes the number of its antecedent, not of a nearer noun. Collective nouns such as company, team, and committee usually take it and its in American usage.
• Clarity. A pronoun that could point to either of two nouns fails even when its number matches. When the sculpture was placed beside the pedestal, it appeared unstable leaves it ambiguous. Repeat the noun.
• This/these. The demonstrative must match the noun it introduces: this finding, these findings.
• Who and whom. Judge by the job inside its own clause. The scientist who led the team (subject of led); the scientist whom the team consulted (object of consulted).
• Case in compounds. Remove the other person: Maya and I analyzed the samples (I analyzed). The director thanked Maya and me (thanked me). Between you and me: an object of a preposition takes the object form.
• Reflexives. Myself and themselves need an antecedent in the sentence: The researchers themselves repeated the test works; The director asked Maya and myself to attend does not.

Apostrophes and possession

Ask first whether anything is owned. If not, use a plain plural with no apostrophe. If something is owned, ask whether the owner is one or many.

• botanist's: one owner (apostrophe before the s)
• botanists': several owners (apostrophe after the plural s)
• botanists: more than one botanist, owning nothing
• Irregular plurals add 's to the plural form: children's, men's, women's.

Its means belonging to it; it's means it is or it has. Whose shows possession; who's means who is. Their marks ownership, there marks a place or opens a sentence, and they're means they are. Expand the contraction to test it. An apostrophe never makes an ordinary plural.

Joint and separate possession: Maya and Leo's project is one shared project; Maya's and Leo's projects are two separate projects.

Attach introductory modifiers to the right noun

The noun phrase right after the comma must be able to do or undergo what the opening phrase says. Trained as a botanist in Edinburgh, she recorded four decades of fieldwork works. Trained as a botanist in Edinburgh, her letters record ... does not, because letters take no training. Walking through the archive, the faded letters caught Maya's attention makes the letters do the walking. The test applies to things as well as people: Built in 1923, the bridge has carried traffic for a century is perfectly logical, because a bridge can be built. Grammar and sense must both work.

Parallel structure and comparisons

Items in a series fill the same grammatical role and take a matching form.

• She collected, pressed, and labelled the specimens. (three finite verbs)
• The work involved collecting, pressing, and labelling. (three gerunds)
• She not only collected the specimens but also labelled them. Whatever follows not only must match what follows but also.
• The letters went either to her student or to her publisher.
• The study aimed to identify the source, measure the rate, and estimate the cost. Parallel infinitives can share one to.

Match function, not word shape, and do not demand equal length. Comparisons must set like against like: Compared with the earlier model, the new design uses less material is logical; Compared with the earlier model, less material was used compares a model with an amount. The same holds for than: The rainfall here is higher than that in the hills, not higher than the hills.

Adjectives, adverbs, and other usage

• An adjective modifies a noun; an adverb modifies a verb, adjective, or adverb. The results were quick but the results arrived quickly.
• Fewer goes with countable nouns; less goes with mass nouns (less wastewater, fewer samples).
• Active and passive are both grammatical; do not reject a passive for being passive.
• Idioms must be learned: capable of, not capable to.
• Avoid needless repetition, but the shortest option is not automatically right.

The method

1. Read the blank and name what belongs there: a verb, a pronoun, a possessive, a modifier, a parallel item.
2. Find what controls the form: the subject, antecedent, owner, timeline, clause structure, or parallel slot.
3. Cross out everything between the controlling word and the blank, and read the two together.
4. Check the time whenever a verb is in play.
5. Choose by rule, and let the sound of the sentence go.

A form can pass one test and fail another: agreement can be right while the tense or finiteness is wrong. Both requirements must hold at once. When two choices both sound grammatical, return to the blank's exact job: the difference is usually timeline, reference, ownership, or logical attachment.

Worked example

The collection of letters, sent over four decades by a botanist working in the Hebrides to her former student in Glasgow, ______ now held in the university archive. Cross out everything between the commas: the collection ______ now held. A collection is one thing, so the answer is is. Are would match letters, which sits inside a phrase and cannot supply the subject.