Error Spotting: Find & Fix Grammar Mistakes, Spot-the-Error & No-Error Practice

For beginners · ages 5–8

Something is not right

An error is a word or mark that breaks a rule of English. Change that one part, and the sentence is fixed.

An error is not a long word, a new word or a word you do not like. It is a part that breaks a rule. In section 8 you will meet the Four-Pass Check, the chapter's way of finding every error. It starts right here, with one question: which part breaks a rule?

Errors come in a few shapes. In this band you will meet three of them.

Notice three things. First, each fix is small: one word, one capital letter, one full stop. The rest of each sentence stayed exactly as it was.

Second, an error is not always a word. A capital letter and a full stop follow rules too. You will check those in section 7, Capitals and full stops.

Third, look at what did not change. "Meera", "red", "Chennai" and "bus" were right, so they stayed. A good fixer changes the part that breaks the rule and leaves everything else alone. If you changed "red" to "blue", the sentence would still say "Meera have", and the error would still be there.

Picture a row of dominoes standing in a line. Each domino is one word. When every domino stands straight, the line is right. An error is one domino standing crooked. You do not knock down the whole row to fix it. You find the one crooked domino, straighten it, and the whole line is right again.

This section gives you the idea of an error. The next sections give you places to look for one: the one wrong word, one or more with is and are, yesterday words and today words, he or him, the little words a, an, in, on and at, and capitals and full stops. In section 8 they all join into the Four-Pass Check. In Practice you will learn that some things that look odd are not errors at all, but choices.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes a sentence can be fixed in two ways. Look again at "The cat are sleeping." You can fix it as "The cat is sleeping." You can also fix it as "The cats are sleeping." Both new sentences are right. In the first, there is one cat. In the second, there are two or more. So which fix is the right one? If the story or the picture tells you there is one cat, choose "is". If it tells you there are many, choose "cats". If nothing tells you, either fix is fine, as long as you change only one word. And here is a second hard one. A sentence can sound strange to you and still be right. "The chameleon is sleepy" may sound odd if you have never met the word chameleon. But the sentence breaks no rule. A new word is not an error. An error is about a rule, not about a feeling. Before you call something an error, ask which rule it breaks. If you cannot name a rule, look again before you change anything.

Did you know that the word error once meant wandering? It comes from an old Latin word, errare, which means "to wander" or "to stray from the path". The same old word gives us erratic, a word for something that wanders about with no pattern. So an error is a word that has wandered off the path of a rule. Fixing it walks the word back. And here is a surprising thing about your own eyes. Read this line quickly: "I saw a bird in the the tree." Did you notice that one word is there twice? Many readers do not, the first time. The eye expects the sentence and slides straight past the extra word. That is why this chapter asks you to read slowly, one word at a time. Your brain is so good at reading that it sometimes fixes errors without telling you. Slowing down lets you catch them.

An error breaks a rule. A sentence you would say differently, or a word you do not know, is not an error for that reason alone. Some sentences can be fixed in two ways. Either fix is fine, as long as the sentence is right and you changed only what broke the rule. Not every sentence has an error. "This one is right" is a real answer, not a way of giving up. An error can be a word, a capital letter or a mark. In this band you will check words first, then capitals and full stops in section 7.

1. Read the whole sentence slowly, one word at a time.
2. Listen for the place where the sentence bumps.
3. Point to the exact word or mark that breaks a rule.
4. Do not blame a word just because it is long or new.
5. Change only the part that is wrong.
6. Leave every right word exactly as it was.
7. Read the fixed sentence again to check that it sounds right.
8. Ask which rule the error breaks before you change it.
9. Say "This one is right" when nothing breaks a rule.
10. When a sentence can be fixed two ways, choose the fix that matches the story or the picture.

• Aarav have a new cricket bat.
• Nisha is reading a story about a tiger.
• Kavya's grandmother live in Jaipur.
• tom and I walk to school.
• Emily is my best friend
• Yesterday Kofi play football.

• The children is singing in the hall.
• Dev have two pencils and an eraser.
• Priya and Rohan are flying a kite.
• The enormous crocodile are hungry.
• Grace and Ben has a puppy.
• Lucia live near the sea.

One word is wrong

Most errors in a short sentence are just one word. Find it, fix it, and leave every other word alone.

Look at the middle column. Each time, only one word is wrong, and it is often the doing word. In section 8 the Four-Pass Check will start with the doing word for exactly this reason: that is where the wrong word hides most often.

The one wrong word likes to hide in three places. Knowing the places makes your finger faster.

Notice three things. First, the doing word is the most common hiding place. "Cry", "have" and "goes" are all doing words. Look there first.

Second, a number is a clue. Two, three and four tell you there is more than one, so the naming word after them usually ends in s: two bananas, three cats. You will check one and more than one in the next section, and the rules for plurals live in ch01 Nouns.

Third, every fix kept the meaning. The baby still cries, and Grace still saw an owl. If your fix changes who did something or what they did, you have changed too much. Go back to the one word that broke the rule.

Picture a string of fairy lights where one bulb has gone out. You do not throw away the whole string and buy a new one. You walk along the string, bulb by bulb, until you find the dark one. You change that single bulb, and the whole string lights up again, exactly as it was before.

Finding one wrong word is the move you will use in every section from now on. In the next section you will look for it in sentences about one and more than one. Then in sentences about yesterday and today, and in he and him. In section 8 the Four-Pass Check tells you where to look first. In Craft you will meet exam questions that ask you to tap, circle or write only the wrong word, and this is the habit they test.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes it is not clear which of two words is the wrong one. Look at "We goes home." You could change goes to go: "We go home." Or you could change We to She: "She goes home." Both new sentences are right. So which word was wrong? Here is the test. Ask what the writer meant. The writer wrote We, so the writer meant a group that includes the writer. That part is what the sentence is about, so it stays. The doing word must fit it: "We go home." The rule is: keep the meaning, and fix the word that breaks the rule around it. The person or thing the sentence is about is usually part of the meaning. The ending on the doing word is usually part of the rule. And a second hard one. "The dog run fast" can be fixed as "The dog runs fast" or "The dogs run fast". Here both fixes keep the meaning close, and each changes one word. If a picture or a story shows one dog, choose "runs". If nothing tells you, either one-word fix is right. Two changes are never needed.

Did you know that old printed books sometimes had a special page for wrong words? It was called the errata page. Errata is a Latin word meaning "errors". When a book had already been printed and someone then found a mistake, the printer could not easily print the whole book again. So a small list went into the book instead. Each line of the list did the same job as this section. It gave the page, the line, the wrong word and the word that should be there. It did not rewrite the page. It pointed to one word and gave one fix. So finding the one wrong word is not a school trick. Printers, editors and writers have been doing it for hundreds of years, one word at a time, exactly the way you are learning to do it now.

Most short sentences with an error have just one wrong word, but not all of them. In Practice and Craft you will meet sentences where a mark, a missing word or a whole joint is the problem. Sometimes two different one-word fixes are both right. Choose the one that keeps the meaning, or the one the story or picture points to. A sentence can have no wrong word at all. Do not change a word just to have something to fix. Changing a right word never fixes an error. It only adds a change.

1. Read the whole sentence once before you point at anything.
2. Read it again slowly, with your finger under each word.
3. Look at the doing word first; the wrong word hides there most often.
4. Check the naming word after a number: two, three, four.
5. Stop on the word that bumps and say the sentence with a new word in its place.
6. Change only that one word.
7. Keep the person or thing the sentence is about.
8. Read the fixed sentence to check it still says what the writer meant.
9. If no word bumps, say that nothing is wrong.

• Arjun and I goes to the park after school.
• Zoya have two brothers.
• Rohan has three cat.
• Oliver likes apples and bananas.
• Lily and Jack is building a sandcastle.
• Mateo sing in the school choir.

• Ananya and Farhan plays chess on Sundays.
• Dadi make rotis every morning.
• Ishaan drew a picture of four horse.
• Ben is reading under the mango tree.
• Emily feed the ducks at the pond.
• Yuki have a pet rabbit.

One or more? Is or are

Count the doer first. One takes one set of words; more than one takes another.

The rule itself lives in ch12 Subject-Verb Agreement, and the plural words live in ch01 Nouns. This section is about finding the slip fast. In section 8 the Four-Pass Check puts this at the start of its first pass: find the doing word, find its doer, and count.

The hardest slips are the ones where another naming word stands between the doer and the doing word. That word tries to trick you.

Notice three things. First, the trick word is always inside a little group that starts with a small word: in the pot, with the kites, in the basket. Cover that group with your finger, and the doer and the doing word sit side by side: "The flowers ... are red."

Second, ask what the sentence is really about. Who is happy? The boy, not the kites. What is new? The toys, not the basket.

Third, the trick works both ways. A one-word doer can hide behind a many-word group, as in "The boy with the kites", and a many doer can hide behind a one-word group. Count the real doer every time, and ignore the word that is merely nearest.

Picture the doer and the doing word holding hands across the sentence. Sometimes other words stand in between them, like children squeezing into a line. Those children are not holding the doing word's hand. Follow the hand back to the real doer, count how many there are, and make sure the doing word matches: one with is, more than one with are.

Counting the doer is the first half of the Four-Pass Check's first pass. In the next section you will add the second half: checking that the doing word fits the time. In Practice you will meet longer sentences where the doer hides further away, such as "The box of pencils is on the desk", and words like each and every. The full rulebook for all of these lives in ch12 Subject-Verb Agreement.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. The letter s does two different jobs. On a naming word, s means more than one: one dog, two dogs. On a doing word, s means one doer: the dog runs, the cat sleeps. So when the doer has an s, the doing word usually does not, and when the doer has no s, the doing word usually does. "The dog runs." One s, on the doing word. "The dogs run." One s, on the naming word. "The dogs runs." Two s's. That is the slip. And here is a second hard one. Some words for more than one have no s at all: children, people, mice, feet. "The children are singing." "The mice run away." Children has no s, but it still means more than one, so it takes are and no s on the doing word. Count the meaning, not the letters. When you are unsure, hold up fingers. One finger: is, has, runs. More than one: are, have, run.

Did you know that the word I breaks the counting rule? I is one person. But it does not take is. It takes am: "I am happy." And it does not take an s on the doing word: "I run", not "I runs". The word you is the same. Even when you means just one friend, it takes are: "You are my friend." So the counting rule has two special guests, I and you. Every other single doer, like Kabir, the dog or my grandmother, takes is and an s. Here is one more surprise. The word sheep is the same for one and for many. "The sheep is in the field" can be right, and so can "The sheep are in the field". Only the story tells you how many sheep there are. Fish and deer can work the same way.

Count the meaning, not the letters. Children, people and mice mean more than one, even with no s. I takes am, and I and you take no s on the doing word, even though they can mean one person. Some sentences can be fixed by changing either the doer or the doing word. Keep what the writer meant: if the writer wrote friends, keep friends and fix the doing word. A few naming words, like sheep and fish, can be one or many. Only the story tells you which, so they are not errors on their own.

1. Find the doing word, then ask who or what is doing it.
2. Count the doer: one, or more than one.
3. One takes is, has and an s on the doing word.
4. More than one takes are, have and no s on the doing word.
5. Cover any little group like "in the pot" and read the doer and the doing word together.
6. Count two names joined by and as two.
7. After a number like two or ten, check the end of the naming word.
8. Remember children, people and mice mean more than one with no s.
9. Keep the writer's doer and fix the doing word.

• All the mangoes in Nani's basket is ripe.
• Kabir run faster than anyone in the class.
• Meera bought two box of sweets.
• Oliver and Lily has a treehouse.
• The three puppies are asleep on Grace's lap.
• Amara's teacher reads to twenty child every day.

• Aarav's two kites is stuck in the tree.
• Dev's grandmother tell the best stories.
• Riya has five pencil in the box.
• Jack and Ben is in the same team.
• Lily's cat sleeps on the sofa all day.
• Nia and Kenji walks to school together.

Yesterday words and today words

A time word tells you when. The doing word must tell the same time.

The rule itself lives in ch13 Tense Consistency. This section is about finding the slip fast. In section 8 the Four-Pass Check puts this in its first pass: find the doing word, then check that it fits the time.

Many past forms do not end in -ed. They change in their own way, and you learn them one by one in ch02 Verbs.

Notice three things. First, the last column shows forms many young children say while they are learning, like "I goed". That is a sign the child knows the -ed pattern very well. Written English uses the special form: "I went".

Second, a past form can hide a slip even when the time is right. "Last Sunday Tom goed to the beach" has the right time but not a real past form. The fix is went.

Third, a question with did needs only one past word. "Did Oliver go to the match?" Did already shows the past, so the doing word stays as go. "Did Oliver went" shows the past twice.

Picture a clock sitting at the start of the sentence. The time word winds the clock: yesterday turns the hands back, right now points them at this minute, and tomorrow turns them forward. Every doing word in the sentence must look at that clock before it chooses how to dress. If a doing word ignores the clock, it has made a time slip.

Checking the time word joins counting the doer to make the Four-Pass Check's first pass, the verb pass. In the next section you will check another kind of match: he or him, she or her. In Practice you will follow time through a whole story, and meet sentences where the time really does change, which is not a slip. The rulebook for all of this lives in ch13 Tense Consistency.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Some time words tell you how often, not when. Look at every day. "Every day Zoya walks to school." That is right: it happens again and again, and it still happens now. But look at this: "Last year, every day Zoya walked to school." That is right too. Last year tells you the time is over, and every day only tells you how often it happened. So every day does not decide the time on its own. Look for the word that tells you when: last year, yesterday, now. If there is one, the doing word follows it. If there is none, every day usually means it still happens now. And here is a second hard one. Sometimes a sentence has no time word at all. "Kabir opened the box." Is that right? Yes. With no time word, the doing word itself sets the time, and there is nothing to disagree with. The slip happens only when two parts of the sentence tell different times.

Did you know that went did not always belong to go? Long ago, English had a word wend, which meant to travel or to make your way. Its past form was went. Over hundreds of years, the old past form of go dropped out of use, and went slid across to take its place. So when you say "I went to school", you are borrowing a word from another doing word. That is one reason go changes in its own way instead of simply taking -ed. You can still hear wend in one old phrase: to wend your way home means to travel slowly home, perhaps with stops along the way. And here is a small surprise about children. When young children say "I goed" or "I eated", they are not being careless. They have spotted the -ed pattern and are using it everywhere. The special forms come a little later.

Every day, always and often tell you how often, not when. Look for a word like yesterday, last year or now to find the time. A sentence with no time word is not an error on its own. The slip happens when two parts of a sentence tell different times. In a story, time can really change: "I was tired, but now I am ready." A real change in time is not a slip. Forms like goed and eated are natural steps in learning English. Written English uses went and ate.

1. Start at the first word of the sentence, not at the doing word.
2. Hunt for a time word: yesterday, last night, right now, tomorrow.
3. Say what the time word means: over, happening now, or not yet.
4. Check that every doing word tells that same time.
5. Use went, ate, saw, drew and ran, not forms with -ed.
6. After did, keep the doing word plain: did go, not did went.
7. Fix the doing word, and keep the time word the writer chose.
8. Remember that every day tells how often, not when.
9. When there is no time word, check that all the doing words agree.

• Yesterday Priya play badminton with Dadi.
• Last night Ishaan's family eat dal and rice.
• Tomorrow Anika will visit the museum.
• Last Sunday Tom goed to the beach.
• Right now Emily was reading in the garden.
• Two days ago Kofi see an elephant.

• Yesterday Arjun and Farhan go to the fair and won a prize.
• Every morning Nani waters the plants.
• Last week Zoya write a letter to a pen pal.
• Did Oliver went to the match last night?
• Last night Grace sleeped early.
• Lucia lived in Madrid now.

He or him? She or her?

He and him are the same person in two shapes. The job in the sentence chooses the shape.

The rule itself lives in ch04 Pronouns. This section is about finding the slip fast. In section 8 the Four-Pass Check puts this in its second pass, the match pass: check each word that must fit its job.

Two names joined by and are where these slips hide most often. Cover the other name, and the right shape becomes clear.

Notice three things. First, covering the other name works every time. "Me played chess" sounds wrong, so the doer needs I. "Dadi took I" sounds wrong, so after took you need me.

Second, "Me and Riya played" is something many people say when they talk with friends. In writing and in exam answers, the standard is "Riya and I played". It is polite to put the other person first, and the doer takes I.

Third, the second row shows why I is not always right. After took, the word is on the receiving end, so me is the right shape, even next to another name: "Dadi took Riya and me to the fair."

Picture each of these words owning two hats. He wears one hat when he is the doer at the front of the sentence, and a different hat, him, when he is on the receiving end after the doing word. I and me, she and her, we and us, they and them are the same. The person never changes. Only the hat changes, and the job in the sentence tells you which hat to wear.

Choosing the shape by its job is the first kind of match you check in the Four-Pass Check's second pass. In the next section you will check another kind: the little words a, an, in, on and at. In Practice you will meet pronoun slips in longer sentences, such as "The teacher gave Meera and I a prize", and learn to check which person a pronoun points back to. The rulebook lives in ch04 Pronouns and ch14 Pronoun Agreement.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes both I and me feel right, because another name stands in between. "My brother and I built a kite." "Dadi watched my brother and me." Both are right. In the first, the pair is the doer, before the doing word built, so I fits. In the second, the pair comes after the doing word watched, so me fits. The trick is the cover test. Cover "my brother and" and read what is left: "I built a kite" sounds right; "Dadi watched me" sounds right. Now try the wrong ones: "Me built a kite" and "Dadi watched I" both break the rule. And here is a second hard one. In speech with friends, many people say "Me and my brother built a kite." Everyone understands it, and it is a normal way of talking. But in writing and in exam answers, the standard is "My brother and I built a kite." So when a question says "in writing" or "in an exam answer", choose the written standard. When you are chatting with a friend, you do not need to correct anyone.

Did you know that he and him are some of the oldest words in English? Most naming words in English do not change shape for their job. A dog is a dog whether it chases or is chased: "The dog chased the cat." "The cat chased the dog." Only the order of the words tells you who did what. But I and me, he and him, she and her, we and us, they and them still change their shape. Long ago, many more English words changed shape like this. Over hundreds of years most of them stopped, and these few kept their two shapes. So when you choose between he and him, you are using a very old part of English that has survived for a very long time. And here is one more surprise. The word you stopped changing too. You say "You are kind" and "I like you": one shape for both jobs. That is why you never has to be fixed.

Me is not wrong. After a doing word, or after to, with or for, me is exactly right: "Dadi helped me." Do not change it to I. "Me and Riya played" is common in everyday speech. In writing and exam answers the standard is "Riya and I played". A question that names writing or an exam wants the written standard. You has one shape for both jobs, so it never needs this fix. When a sentence names a person only by a first name, do not guess whether that person is he or she. Use the name again, or wait for the sentence to tell you.

1. Find the word like I, me, he or him in the sentence.
2. Look at what comes straight after it: a doing word means it is the doer.
3. Look at what comes straight before it: a doing word or to, with or for means the receiving end.
4. Use I, he, she, we or they for the doer.
5. Use me, him, her, us or them on the receiving end.
6. In a pair, cover the other name and read what is left.
7. In writing and exam answers, write "Riya and I" for a doer pair.
8. Leave a me that is already right, as in "Mum helped me".
9. Never guess he or she from a first name alone.

• Him is Arjun's older brother.
• Priya's mum waved at we from the gate.
• Kabir's sister said her would come to the match.
• Grandpa told Tom a story, and Tom thanked him.
• Emily and me walked to the shop.
• Amara and Grandma baked bread, and them sold it at the market.

• Anika said, "Us are going to Goa for the holidays."
• Dev's grandmother helped me with my homework.
• Meera's brother is kind, and everyone likes he.
• Ben's mum said that her would drive us to the pool.
• Jack's grandad took they to the park.
• Mateo's aunt sent a postcard to we.

Little words: a, an, in, on, at

Five little words cause many errors. Check them with two quick tests.

The rules belong to other chapters: a and an to ch05 Articles & Determiners, and in, on and at to ch07 Prepositions. This section teaches you to find the slip fast. In section 8 the little words become part of the Four-Pass Check, in its second pass, the match pass.

The a-or-an check listens to the sound, not the letter. That is why a few words surprise people.

Notice three things. First, hour and honest start with the letter h, but the h is silent, so the first sound is a vowel sound and we say an.

Second, uniform starts with the letter u, but it sounds like "you". That is not a vowel sound, so we say a uniform. Umbrella starts with the same letter, but its first sound is a vowel sound, so we say an umbrella.

Third, the check always looks at the very next word. "An apple" becomes "a red apple", because red now comes straight after the little word, and red starts with an r sound.

The in-on-at check works the same way every time: picture where the thing is. A book in the bag is hidden inside. A book on the bag is lying on top. A friend at the gate is standing at that spot.

Picture a little word as a small door just before a bigger word. Before you walk through, you knock and listen. If the next word answers with a vowel sound, like "egg" or "hour", you use the wider door, an. If it answers with any other sound, you use the narrow door, a. For in, on and at, picture three pictures: a toy hidden inside a box, a cup sitting on a table, and a friend waiting at a gate.

The little-word checks grow with you. In section 8 they become part of the Four-Pass Check: after the doing word, you check the words that must match, and a or an must match the next sound. In Practice you will find harder article and preposition slips hidden inside longer sentences, such as a missing "the" or a wrong partner word after a verb. Each time, you will point back to the chapter that owns the rule, ch05 or ch07.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. The same letter can make different sounds, so the letter alone cannot choose a or an. Take the letter u. In umbrella and uncle, it makes a vowel sound, so we say an umbrella and an uncle. In uniform and unicorn, it sounds like "you", so we say a uniform and a unicorn. Take the letter h. In hour and honest, the h is silent, so we say an hour and an honest boy. In house and hat, you hear the h, so we say a house and a hat. So the only safe test is your own voice. Say the next word aloud, softly. Listen to the very first sound that comes out. A vowel sound takes an. Any other sound takes a. And here is a second hard one. In, on and at can all be right for the same place, if the picture changes. "The ball is in the box" and "The ball is on the box" are both good English. They just show two different pictures. So a question must tell you the picture first, like "The lid is shut". Only then can one of them be the wrong word.

Did you know that "an" and "a" began as one word? Long ago, in Old English, the word for "one" was an. Over hundreds of years, people started to drop the n before a word that began with a consonant sound, because "an ball" is harder to say than "a ball". So a was born. Before a vowel sound, the n stayed, because "an egg" flows smoothly. And here is the surprising part. Because a and an sound so alike, some words lost or gained a letter by mistake. An apron was once "a napron". People heard "a napron" as "an apron", and the n moved across. The same thing happened to an adder, a kind of snake, which was once "a nadder". So little words are not so little after all. They can even change the big words next to them.

The a-or-an rule follows sound, and sounds can differ a little from speaker to speaker. The items in this section use words whose first sound is clear. In, on and at depend on the picture. Two of them can both be right if they show two different pictures, so a fair question always tells you what the picture is. This section does not re-teach every use of the little words. Articles belong to ch05 Articles & Determiners and place words to ch07 Prepositions. Here you only learn to spot a slip and fix it. Only change a little word when the check says it is wrong. A right little word should stay.

1. Slow down on the little words; the eye likes to skip them.
2. For a or an, say the next word aloud and listen to its first sound.
3. Use an before a vowel sound: an egg, an hour, an umbrella.
4. Use a before any other sound: a ball, a uniform, a one-rupee coin.
5. Check the word straight after the little word, not the noun further on.
6. For in, on or at, picture where the thing is: inside, on top, or at a spot.
7. Read the whole sentence before you decide.
8. Fix only the little word that breaks the rule.
9. Leave a right little word alone, even if it looks odd at first.

• Ananya ate an banana at lunch.
• Rohan found a egg in the nest.
• Kabir waited an hour for the train.
• Oliver put the toy car on the box and shut the lid.
• Grace is waiting in the bus stop.
• Kofi wears a uniform to school.

• Priya saw an owl in the tree.
• Arjun put a apple on the plate.
• Meera's kite is stuck in the roof.
• Jack has a umbrella with red spots.
• Emily will meet us on the gate.
• Lucia saw an elephant at the zoo.

Capitals and full stops

Every sentence has a start and an end. Check both, and the names in between.

The rules belong to ch18 Capitalization and, for the end marks, ch11 Sentence Types. Here you learn to see the slip. You find these slips by reading and by choosing the version that is written correctly, not by tapping a word. In section 8 this check becomes the third pass of the Four-Pass Check, the mark pass.

Here is one short story checked line by line. Each line has one slip at the start, in a name or at the end.

Notice three things. First, a capital at the start is needed even when the first word is small, like "on" or "we".

Second, a name needs its capital wherever it sits: at the start, in the middle or at the end. The river Yamuna is a name, so it is tall even at the end of the line. A plain word like river or fish is not a name, so it stays small inside a sentence.

Third, the end mark depends on what the sentence does. "Can you see the fish" asks something, so it needs a question mark. The words are the same; only the mark changes.

Picture each sentence as a train. The engine at the front is the capital letter: it stands tall and pulls the words along. Special carriages in the middle carry names, and each one has a tall flag, its capital letter. At the back is the guard's van, the end mark: a full stop for a telling train, a question mark for an asking train, an exclamation mark for an excited one. A train with no engine or no guard's van is not ready to leave the station.

The start-and-end check grows with you. In section 8 it becomes the third pass of the Four-Pass Check, the mark pass. In Practice you will check more kinds of names, such as days, months, languages and festivals, and learn which words stay small, such as seasons and school subjects. In Craft the mark pass will also check the joins between sentences, where one sentence runs into the next. Each time, the rule lives in ch18 Capitalization or ch11 Sentence Types.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. The same word can be a name in one sentence and a plain word in another. "We sat by the river" talks about any river, so river is a plain word and stays small. "We sat by the River Ganga" gives the river its full name, so it gets capitals. "My aunt is coming" uses aunt as a plain word. "Can we go now, Aunty?" uses Aunty as the name you call her by, so it is tall. So the check does not ask "Is this an important word?" It asks "Is this the name of one special person, place or thing?" Only a name gets a capital in the middle of a sentence. And here is a second hard one. A sentence that asks something ends with a question mark even when it is polite and quiet: "Could you help me?" A sentence that tells something ends with a full stop even when it is about a question: "Riya asked a question." Look at what the sentence does, not at the words it talks about. Both of these take practice. When you are unsure, ask the two questions: is it a name, and is the sentence telling or asking?

Did you know that the full stop has another name? In India and Britain we usually call it a full stop. In America it is usually called a period. Both names are right; they are two names for the same dot. And here is the surprising part. Capital letters are also called upper-case letters, and small letters are lower-case letters. The names come from old printing shops. Printers built each page from little metal letters kept in wooden trays called cases. The capital letters were kept in the case higher up, and the small letters in the case lower down, closer to the printer's hands, because small letters are needed far more often. So when you check for a capital, you are really checking whether the right letter came from the upper case.

This section checks the start, the names and the end of a sentence. It does not cover every capital; days, months, languages, titles and festivals come in Practice. An exclamation mark and a full stop can both end a telling sentence. "We won." and "We won!" are both right; the mark shows how strongly it is said. Only a question needs a question mark. Capital and mark slips are found by reading and by choosing the right version. They are not tapped, because a tap cannot show a capital letter or a dot. The rules belong to ch18 Capitalization and ch11 Sentence Types. Here you only learn to spot the slip.

1. Look at the very first letter of every sentence: it must be a capital.
2. Stop at every name of a person or a place: it must start with a capital.
3. Check the word I: it is always a capital letter.
4. Keep ordinary words small inside a sentence, even important ones.
5. Look at the very end: a telling sentence takes a full stop.
6. An asking sentence takes a question mark, even when it is polite.
7. A strong feeling may take an exclamation mark.
8. Choose the version that is written correctly; do not rewrite the words.
9. Check your own writing the same way before you hand it in.

• kiran plays the tabla every evening.
• Neha went to jaipur in the holidays.
• Aditi and i made a card for Dadi.
• Where is Harry's red pencil.
• Lucy's cat is called Biscuit.
• Omar's grandparents live in Cairo.

• Rahul's school is closed on Diwali
• Can Sunita come to the park.
• Mohan and Veer live in Chennai.
• Ella and George visited london.
• Where does Ben live?
• Ama and i planted a mango tree.

The Four-Pass Check

One check finds errors in any sentence. Run its four passes in order, then decide.

This is the chapter's check. Every section from here on uses it, and in Practice, Craft and Master the passes will look for more kinds of slip.

Here is the Four-Pass Check run slowly on one sentence: "Last Sunday Pooja and Dev walks to the market."

Then decide: one wrong word, walks. The fix is walked: "Last Sunday Pooja and Dev walked to the market."

Notice three things. First, the doing-word pass found the slip, which is the most common place for one. That is why it comes first.

Second, the other three passes still ran. They found nothing, and that matters: it tells you there is only one error to fix.

Third, the fix is one word. The check does not ask you to rewrite the sentence. It asks you to find the part that breaks a rule and change only that.

Picture four torches, one for each pass, lined up by the door. You pick up the first torch and shine it only on the doing word. You put it down and pick up the second, which shines on the words that must match. The third lights up the capitals and the marks. The fourth lights up the whole sentence so you can hear what it says. Only when all four torches have shone do you decide what you found.

The Four-Pass Check grows with you. In the next section you will use it to decide that a sentence has nothing wrong. In Practice the same four passes will look for more slips: the true subject far from its verb, owners and plurals, sound-alike words like their and there, and the difference between an error and a choice. In Craft and Master the mark pass will check the joins between sentences, and the match pass will catch modifiers in the wrong place.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. Sometimes one wrong word breaks two checks at once. Take "Tomorrow my cousins visits the zoo." The doing-word pass asks two things. One or more? My cousins are more than one, so visits does not fit. Yesterday or today? Tomorrow is a time word, so the doing word should look ahead. The fix, "will visit", mends both at once. It is still one error, in one place: the doing word. So do not count the checks that complain. Count the places that need a fix. One place, one error. And here is a second hard one: a choice is not an error. "Can I have some water?" and "May I have some water?" are both right. "I'm ready" and "I am ready" are both right. Before you mark any word, ask one more question: does this break a rule, or is it just another way to say it? Only a broken rule is an error. The Four-Pass Check finds the places to look. This last question makes sure you only fix what is really wrong.

Did you know that your brain is very good at hiding errors from you? When you read, your brain guesses what comes next and fills in what it expects to see. That is why reading is fast. But it also means your brain can slide straight past a doubled word or a missing one. Try this: Paris in the the spring. Many people read it as "Paris in the spring" and never notice the second "the", because it sits at the start of a new line. And here is the surprising part. People who check writing for a living often read a text more than once, looking for one kind of slip each time, and some even read a page backwards, one word at a time, so that the brain cannot guess ahead. The Four-Pass Check uses the same trick: one kind of slip on each pass.

The Four-Pass Check finds the places to look. It does not re-teach the rules; each rule lives in its own chapter, such as ch12 for one or more and ch13 for yesterday and today. Most short sentences in this band have one error or none. If you seem to find two, check whether one change fixes both. A different way to say something is not an error. "Can I" and "May I", "I'm" and "I am" are both right. The order matters most when you are learning. Later, the passes become quick and you will run them almost without thinking.

1. Read the whole sentence once to know what it says.
2. Do the doing-word pass first: one or more, and when.
3. Do the match pass: he or him, a or an, in, on or at.
4. Do the mark pass: the capital at the start, names and I, the end mark.
5. Do the sense pass: read it in your head and check what each word means.
6. Run all four passes before you decide.
7. Fix only the one wrong word; leave the rest.
8. Say "no error" when all four passes find nothing.
9. Ask whether it breaks a rule or is just another way to say it.

• Ishaan play football every Sunday.
• Yesterday Pooja walks to the market.
• Nanaji lost his glasses, so we helped he find them.
• Sophie has a apple in the lunchbox.
• Oscar and I went to the park
• Chen has too sisters.

• Mira and I are painting a rainbow.
• Kavita's cousins is singing in the hall.
• Last night Dhruv eat three rotis.
• Amelia met Grandma on the gate.
• can Noah come to my party?
• Sofia's dog is sleeping under the table.

Nothing wrong here

Some sentences have nothing wrong. When all four passes come back clear, the answer is no error.

No error is a real answer, not a last guess. This is the Four-Pass Check's second answer: after the passes, you decide one wrong word, or none.

Some right sentences look unusual at first. Here are four that people often "fix" when they should not.

Notice three things. First, each of these passes all four passes. The doing words fit, the matching words match, the marks are there, and each one says what it means.

Second, some of them are different ways to say the same thing. "Can I" and "May I" are two right choices. A choice is not an error.

Third, looking odd is not a rule. Before you change a word, name the rule it breaks. If you cannot, leave it alone.

Picture a doctor checking a patient who feels well. The doctor listens to the heart, looks in the ears, checks the throat and takes the temperature. Everything is fine. A good doctor does not hand out medicine anyway. The doctor says, "You are healthy. Off you go." When your four passes come back clear, you are that doctor: no medicine, no change, just "no error".

No error grows with you. In the next section, the first mixed review, some sentences will have one wrong word and some will have none, and you will decide which. In Practice you will learn to tell an error from a choice in harder sentences, and to choose "No error" in four-part items only after all four passes. In Master you will judge whether an item is fair: whether it has exactly one error, or truly none.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. A sentence can be right even when a word next to the doing word seems to disagree. "The mangoes in Nisha's basket are ripe." The word just before are is basket, and basket is one thing. So it feels as if is should come next. But ask what is ripe. The mangoes are ripe, not the basket. Mangoes are more than one, so are is right. The sentence has no error. So the doing-word pass does not look at the nearest word. It asks who or what is doing it, and checks the doing word against that. And here is a second hard one. Two different sentences can both be right. "Can I sit here?" and "May I sit here?" ask the same thing in two right ways. If a task shows you one of them, the answer is no error, even if you would have used the other. When you feel sure a sentence is wrong, name the rule. If the rule is "I would say it differently", that is a choice, and the sentence stays.

Did you know that the word "error" first meant wandering? It comes from an old Latin word, errare, which means "to wander" or "to stray". An error was a step off the path. In old stories a knight errant was a knight who wandered from place to place looking for adventure. So when you spot an error, you are finding the place where a sentence has wandered off the path of a rule, and you bring it back with one small fix. And here is the surprising part. If a sentence never left the path, there is nothing to bring back. Changing it would make it wander. That is why "no error" is such an important answer: it means the sentence has stayed on the path the whole way.

"No error" means the four passes found nothing that breaks a rule. It does not mean the sentence is the best possible sentence; another right way may exist. A choice is not an error. Can I and May I, I'm and I am, a sentence starting with And or ending with with are all right. In this band most sentences are short, so the passes are quick. Run all four anyway before you decide. Not every set of items has a no-error sentence, and not every item is one. The passes decide, not a guess.

1. Run all four passes before you decide.
2. If no pass finds a slip, say "no error".
3. Change nothing in a sentence that is right.
4. Before you mark a word, name the rule it breaks.
5. Treat a different but right way to say something as a choice.
6. Check the doing word against who is doing it, not the nearest word.
7. Do not mark a word just because it is new or unusual.
8. Expect some items to have no error on purpose.
9. Trust the passes more than the worry that an answer is too easy.

• Arjun and I are going home.
• Sana and Farah waited, but the bus did not come.
• Rehan asked, "Can I play outside?"
• Who did Freddie sit with?
• Lily have a new bike.
• Diego's grandmother makes the best soup.

• The mangoes in Nisha's basket are ripe.
• Yesterday Varun went to the library.
• An hour later, Tara's kite was flying again.
• Charlie ran home. And then it started to rain.
• Emma's dogs is very fluffy.
• Aiko goes swimming every Saturday.

First mixed review

This review mixes every Discover check. One tool handles them all: the Four-Pass Check.

Each rule lives in its own chapter: one or more in ch12, yesterday and today in ch13, he or him in ch04, a or an in ch05, in, on and at in ch07, and capitals in ch18. This review only asks you to find the slip and fix it.

Here is a short note checked line by line, just as you would check your own writing. Each line has one slip or none.

Notice three things. First, the slips are all different: a doing word, a little word, a he-or-him and a capital. Only the full check, run in order, catches all four.

Second, two lines have nothing wrong. They stay just as they are. A good checker fixes four words in this note, not six.

Third, the first slip, "we goes" after yesterday, breaks two checks at once: one or more, and yesterday or today. Still, it is one error in one place, and one word, went, fixes it.

Picture a toolbox with four tools inside: a magnifying glass for the doing word, a pair of matching socks for the match pass, a tall flag and a dot for the mark pass, and an ear for the sense pass. In a mixed review you do not know which tool you will need, so you take out all four every time, one after the other, and put them back only when the sentence has been checked.

Discover is complete, and the Four-Pass Check comes with you into Practice. There it will find the true subject when it is far from its doing word, tense slips inside a story, owners and plurals, sound-alike words like their and there, and capitals for days, months and languages. Practice also asks a new question before every fix: is this an error, or a choice? Each slip will still point back to the chapter that owns its rule.

Here is a hard one, and it is fine to find it hard. In a mixed set, the kind of slip changes from sentence to sentence, and some sentences have none. You cannot tell which from the one before. Look at these three in a row: "The kites is flying high." "The kite is flying high." "The kites are flying high." The first has a slip: kites are more than one, so it should be are. The second and third are both right, with nothing to fix. They differ by one letter, but they show two different pictures: one kite, and many kites. So the check does not ask "Does this look like the last sentence?" It asks the four questions again from the start. And here is a second hard one. A sentence can have a word you did not expect and still be right. "Mia and Ben are twins" is right. "Mia and Ben is twins" is not. The difference is one small word, are or is, and only the doing-word pass sees it. When you are tired at the end of a set, that is exactly the pass that gets skipped. Slow down on the last few sentences, not just the first few.

Did you know that printed books used to come with a list of their own errors? Long ago, printers built each page from small metal letters, set one at a time by hand. Even careful printers sometimes put a letter or a word in the wrong place. When the printer or the author found the slips after the book was printed, they added a page at the back or the front listing them, with the fix for each one. That page was called the errata, a Latin word meaning "errors". One error on its own is an erratum. And here is the surprising part. The list itself was sometimes checked so quickly that it had errors of its own. A single fast read misses things, even for grown-ups whose job is printing books. That is why the Four-Pass Check reads slowly, one kind of slip at a time.

This review mixes the Discover checks only. Longer sentences, owners and plurals, and harder sound-alike words come in Practice. Every sentence here has one wrong word or none. Real writing can have more, and Craft will show you how to check a whole paragraph. A different but right way to say something is not an error. Can I and May I, I'm and I am are both right. Each rule lives in its own chapter. If a slip keeps puzzling you, go back to that chapter: ch12 for one or more, ch13 for yesterday and today, ch04 for he or him, ch05 and ch07 for the little words, and ch18 for capitals.

1. Treat every sentence as new; do not guess from the one before.
2. Run all four passes, in order, every time.
3. Check the doing word first: one or more, and when.
4. Check the matching words: he or him, a or an, in, on or at.
5. Check the capital, the names, I and the end mark.
6. Read for sense, and watch sound-alike words like two and too.
7. Fix only the one wrong word.
8. Say no error when all four passes are clear.
9. Slow down on the last sentences of a set, when tiredness skips a pass.

• Sameer's mangoes is very sweet.
• Yesterday Anjali paint a rainbow.
• Dadaji is tired, so please let he rest.
• Harriet saw a owl in the garden.
• george and I play football.
• Kwame and Efua are reading in the library.

• Sneha keeps the crayons at the box.
• Om and i are in the same class.
• Last night Pranav watch a film with an uncle.
• Where is Jack's football.
• Mia and Ben are twins.
• Hana has too cats.

Building accuracy · ages 8–12

Error or choice?

An error breaks a rule you can name. A choice is a different, standard way to say the same thing.

This is the question that comes before every key in the Four-Pass Check: after the verb, match, mark and sense passes find something, ask whether it is a rule or a choice.

Some choices look like errors because a teacher once preferred one form. Knowing them saves you from marking good sentences.

Real errors come in families too: a verb that does not agree with its subject, a tense that slips, a pronoun in the wrong case, a missing article, a wrong preposition partner, an apostrophe on a plural. The next sections take them one family at a time.

Picture two referees. The first blows the whistle only when a rule of the game is broken: a foul, a handball, the ball over the line. The second blows it every time a player does something the referee would not have done. The first referee is fair. The second stops the match every minute. An error checker is the first referee: the whistle is for rules, not for style.

You can now separate an error from a choice. The next section starts on the first family of real errors: agreement slips. The rule is already yours from Chapter 12. What is new is where the slip hides - a verb matched to the nearest noun instead of the true subject, as in "The box of pencils are on the desk."

Here is the hard case: a form that is a choice in one setting and keyed in another. Less people came to the fair this year. Fewer people came to the fair this year. In everyday speech, less with a plural noun is very common, and many careful speakers use it. In formal written English, fewer is expected with things you can count (Chapter 5). So is less an error or a choice? The answer depends on the standard the task names. If the item says "in formal written English", less people is keyed and fewer is the fix. If there is no such stem - in a chat or a story told in a character's voice - it is not keyed. And some uses of less are standard everywhere: less than 10 kg, 25 words or less. The same care applies to dialect forms. "We was late" is grammatical in some dialects of English, and "She don't" is heard in many places. In standard English they are keyed, and an item that tests them says so. So the rule-or-choice question has a second half: which standard is the task asking about? A good item names it. A good checker reads the stem before judging the sentence.

Some of the 'rules' learners are taught to enforce were never rules of English grammar. The idea that a sentence must not end with a preposition goes back to writers in the 1600s who admired Latin, where a preposition cannot come last. English has always put prepositions at the end of questions like "Who are you talking to?" The same is true of starting a sentence with And or But. Writers have done it for centuries, and many well-edited books and newspapers still do. Meanwhile, some real errors are rarely taught because they feel natural in speech. "There's three reasons" slips past many speakers, but in writing, there are three reasons keeps agreement. The ear is a poor judge of what is a rule.

This section is about the difference between error and choice, not about any one family of errors; each family has its own section next. A choice can still be a weak fit for the reader - wordy (Chapter 20) or too informal (Chapter 22) - but that is an editor's note, not an error key. Dialect forms and Indian English words are described, never mocked: they are standard in their own variety, and an item that keys them names the standard it is testing.

1. Before you mark anything, ask: which rule does this break?
2. Name the chapter that owns the rule - agreement, tense, pronoun, article, preposition.
3. If you cannot name a rule, treat the difference as a choice.
4. Leave optional commas, contractions and final prepositions alone.
5. Leave singular they, his or her, and has or have with team alone.
6. Read the stem: does it name formal, exam or standard English?
7. Keep Indian English words such as prepone; they are standard.
8. Give wordiness and informal words an editor's note, not an error key.

• Priya don't like cold coffee.
• Arjun finished the homework, and then we went out to play.
• Who did Kavya go to the fair with?
• Oliver's cousins was tired after the long drive.
• Everyone in Ms Clarke's class brought their own paints.
• In Lima, Ana and Diego goes to the market on Sundays.

• Yesterday Rohan buy a new kite.
• Can we prepone the class test to Monday?
• Meera gave the book to Sunil and I.
• The team have chosen a new captain.
• To really understand a poem, read it twice.
• In Seoul, Min-jun bought an umbrella because it was raining.

Agreement slips: the true subject

The verb agrees with its true subject, not with the noun that happens to stand next to it.

This is the verb pass of the Four-Pass Check: find each verb, find its true subject, then check that they agree. The rule is Chapter 12's; the skill here is finding the subject.

Some phrases between subject and verb are longer and harder to see past. The stripping move is the same.

Two families are both standard and are never keyed as slips. A collective noun such as team, class or family can take a singular or a plural verb: the team has won and the team have won are both standard (Chapter 12, S17). None can take is or are: none of the biscuits is left and none of the biscuits are left are both standard.

Picture the verb as a train carriage and the true subject as the engine it is coupled to. Other nouns stand on the platform next to the train: of pencils, in the street, from Nairobi. They are close, but they are not coupled. To check agreement, follow the coupling back to the engine, not to whoever happens to be standing nearest.

You can now find the true subject and judge the verb against it. The next section checks the other half of the verb pass: tense. A verb can agree perfectly with its subject and still slip out of the time of the story around it, as in "We reached the station and the train leaves."

Here is the hard case: a subject that looks plural but works as one thing, and a subject that looks single but is two. Bread and butter is my favourite breakfast. Ravi and Sana is in the same class. Both subjects are joined by and. The first sentence is standard: bread and butter here names one dish, so it takes is. The second is a slip: Ravi and Sana are two people, so the verb is are. How does a checker tell them apart? Ask whether the and-phrase names one thing or two. A dish, a pair treated as one idea - fish and chips, rice and dal - can take a singular verb. Two people, two objects or two places take a plural verb. The same thinking settles each and every. "Every boy and girl was given a badge" is standard: every makes each item single, one at a time. But "Each of the girls have a book" is a slip, because the true subject is each, and each is one. This is why exam items that test and-subjects use people or separate objects. When the and-phrase could name one thing, a careful item leaves it alone, and so should you.

Researchers who study speech have a name for the nearest-noun slip: agreement attraction. The noun that stands close to the verb seems to pull the verb towards its own number, and careful speakers make the slip too, especially in long sentences said quickly. That is why the slip feels natural when you read it. "The key to the lockers are missing" can sound fine at speed, because lockers is the last noun the ear heard. The eye has to do what the ear does not: go back and find the true subject. Exam writers know this, which is why so many agreement items put a plural noun right next to the verb of a singular subject.

This section finds the subject; it does not re-teach agreement, which belongs to Chapter 12. Collective nouns (team, class, family) with has or have, and none with is or are, are both standard and never keyed. An and-phrase that names one thing, such as bread and butter, may take a singular verb. Neither ... nor and either ... or have their own rules in Chapter 12 and are not tested here.

1. Find the verb first, then ask who or what is doing it.
2. Cross out every of-phrase between the subject and the verb.
3. After There is or Here comes, look ahead for the true subject.
4. Treat each, every, everyone and one of as one.
5. Treat two people or things joined by and as more than one.
6. Read the subject and verb together, with nothing between them.
7. Leave the team has or have, and none is or are, alone.
8. Point each slip back to its rule in Chapter 12.

• The list of winners were pinned outside the staff room in Bhopal.
• There is three reasons why Ishaan missed the bus.
• Each of the dancers in Kavita's troupe have a red scarf.
• The team have chosen their captain for the season.
• Mr Evans says the key to the lockers are missing.
• One of my friends from Nairobi plays the violin.

• The price of the tickets for the Chennai concert have gone up.
• Look, here comes the buses for the school trip to Agra!
• Ravi and Sana is in the same class this year.
• Everyone in the choir knows the words by heart.
• None of the biscuits are left, so Grace bought more.
• In Cairo, the noise from the trucks in the street keep us awake.

Tense slips in a story

A text keeps one time unless the time really changes. A slip is a change of tense with no change of time.

This is the second half of the verb pass in the Four-Pass Check: after agreement, check that each verb's tense fits the time of the text. The rule belongs to Chapter 13; the skill here is noticing where the time slides.

Not every change of tense is a slip. Four kinds of change are right, and a careful checker leaves them alone.

The slip that exam items test most after the sliding story is the present perfect with a finished time. Has visited, have seen and has finished connect the past to now, so they cannot sit with yesterday, last week or two weeks ago, which close the time off.

Picture a story as a film shot on one day. Every scene has the same light. If one scene suddenly shows bright noon in the middle of an evening, the viewer notices at once - unless the film has signalled a jump, like 'Twenty years later'. A tense slip is the noon scene with no signal. A time word such as now or later is the signal that makes a change right.

You have now checked both halves of the verb pass: agreement and tense. The next section starts the match pass, with pronouns. A pronoun must take the right shape for its job and match the noun it stands for - and some pronoun forms that look like slips, such as singular they, are standard.

Here is the hard case: a present tense inside a past story that is right for a different reason. When we visited Ooty, we stayed at a hotel that has a view of the lake. When we visited Ooty, we stayed at a hotel that had a view of the lake. Is has a slip? Not necessarily. If the hotel still stands and still has the view, the present is standard: it describes a fact that is still true. The past had is also standard: it keeps the whole sentence in the time of the visit. Both are choices, and a fair item does not key either one. Compare: "When we visited Ooty, we stayed at a hotel and eat dinner by the lake." Eat is a slip. Eating dinner is an action inside the visit, and the visit is over. There is no fact that is still true here - only an action that belongs to the past. So the test is not 'Is every verb past?' It is 'Is this verb an action inside the story, or a fact that is still true now?' Actions inside a past story keep the past. Facts that are still true may stay present. Exam items that test tense slips use actions, not still-true facts, so that only one answer can be defended.

Storytellers often switch into the present on purpose. A friend telling a story may say, "So yesterday I walk into the classroom, and guess who is sitting at my desk?" This is called the historic present, and it makes a past event feel as if it is happening now. Newspaper headlines do something similar: "Local girl wins chess title" reports a win that is already over. The present makes the news feel fresh and saves space. Both are choices, used on purpose and kept consistent. A slip is different: one present verb in the middle of a past story, with no reason and no signal. That is why exam items test the single sliding verb, not a whole story told in the present.

This section finds slips; it does not re-teach tense forms, which belong to Chapter 2 (verb forms) and Chapter 13 (tense consistency). A story told in the present from start to end is a choice, not a slip. General truths and still-true facts may stay present inside a past story, and some sentences allow either tense, as the hotel example shows; such sentences are never keyed. Verb forms such as had went belong to Chapter 2.

1. Name the time of the text before you check any verb.
2. Look for a time word: yesterday, last week, every morning, now.
3. Check every verb in a list of actions against the first one.
4. Never pair have seen or has finished with a finished time such as yesterday.
5. Leave general truths in the present: the Earth goes round the Sun.
6. Leave a real time change alone when a word such as now signals it.
7. Leave a story told in the present throughout alone.
8. Point each slip back to Chapter 13.

• We reached Howrah station at six, and the train leaves ten minutes later.
• I have seen Farhan at the market yesterday.
• Our teacher in Jaipur told us that the Earth goes round the Sun.
• Grace opened the door and sees a fox in the garden.
• Tom's family lived in Leeds for six years; now they live in York.
• Last Sunday in Nairobi, Wanjiru's class plants twenty trees.

• Diwali was on a Thursday that year, and we visit our grandparents in Lucknow.
• Every morning Nikhil's grandfather walks to the temple and rang the bell.
• Sneha had already left when the bus arrived.
• The match was over, but the crowd cheers for another ten minutes.
• When we were in London, we learnt that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
• In Lima, Luis has finished the mural last week.

Pronoun slips

A pronoun takes the shape of its job, and matches the noun it stands for. Two quick tests find most slips.

This is the match pass of the Four-Pass Check: a pronoun must match its job and its antecedent. The rules belong to Chapter 4 (case) and Chapter 14 (antecedents); the skill here is testing each pronoun fast.

Some pronoun forms look like slips to a strict checker but are standard English. They are never keyed.

Two slips are common in careful writing because writers try too hard to sound correct. Between you and I puts a subject shape after a preposition; between you and me is standard. And myself used alone, as in gave Dr Shah and myself a certificate, has nothing in the sentence to point back to; me is standard there.

Picture pronouns as players who wear a different shirt for each position. I, he, she, we and they wear the attacking shirt - they do the action. Me, him, her, us and them wear the defending shirt - they receive it. A player standing next to a teammate does not change shirts. To check a pronoun in a pair, send the teammate off and see whether the player is wearing the right shirt for the position.

You have now checked verbs and pronouns. The next section stays in the match pass with the smallest words of all: articles and prepositions. A missing the, a wrong a or an, good in instead of good at, and discuss about in an exam answer are where many exam errors hide.

Here is the hard case: a pronoun that is grammatical but unclear. Riya and Priya are sisters. Riya told Priya that she had won the quiz. Every word here is in the right case, and she matches a singular noun. There is no broken rule of form. But who won? She could be Riya or Priya, and the reader cannot tell. Chapter 14 (S18) calls this an unclear antecedent. Is it an error? That depends on what the item asks. In a spot-the-error item about form, the sentence has no case or number slip. In an item that asks "Who won the quiz?" the unclear she is exactly the problem, and the fix is to name the winner: Riya told Priya, "You have won the quiz." or Riya told Priya that Priya had won. This is why a careful item says what it is judging. When the stem asks who is meant, an unclear pronoun is keyed. When it does not, the sentence is judged on case and number only. The same care protects singular they. "Every student must bring their book" is not unclear: their points back to every student, and the reader knows exactly who is meant.

Between you and I is a slip that careful speakers make more often than careless ones. Linguists call it hypercorrection: a speaker who was corrected for saying "Me and Kabir went" learns that and I sounds more correct, and then uses it everywhere - even after a preposition, where me is right. Singular they, on the other hand, is far older than many people think. Writers have used they for one person whose gender is unknown or unimportant for centuries, and many modern style guides accept it. So the pronoun that sounds 'polite' can be the slip, and the pronoun that sounds 'too casual' can be standard.

This section finds pronoun slips; it does not re-teach pronoun case (Chapter 4) or antecedent agreement (Chapter 14). Singular they, his or her, who for whom in everyday writing, and its or their with a collective noun are standard and never keyed. In speech, Me and Kabir went is very common; items key it only in writing or under a stem that names standard written English. An unclear antecedent is keyed only when the stem asks who is meant.

1. Find every pronoun that sits in a pair with a name.
2. Take the other name away and read the pronoun alone.
3. Use I, he, she, we, they for the doer; me, him, her, us, them after a verb or preposition.
4. Write between you and me.
5. Use myself only when an earlier I in the sentence points to it.
6. Check that each pronoun matches its noun in number.
7. Leave singular they and his or her alone.
8. Flag an unclear pronoun when the question asks who is meant.

• The teacher gave Meera and I a prize.
• Every student must bring their own atlas.
• Riya and Priya are sisters. Riya told Priya that she had won the quiz.
• Oliver and me walked to the park after school.
• The swallows in our Kent garden built its nest under the roof.
• Between you and me, Sofia's surprise party is on Friday.

• Me and Kabir went to the market in Indore.
• Ananya asked Rohit and me to help with the rangoli.
• The committee gave Dr Shah and myself a certificate.
• Somebody has left their umbrella in the hall.
• Who did you meet at the concert in Bath?
• The coach picked Yuki and he for the relay.

Article and preposition slips

The little words carry rules too. Five checks find most slips.

This is part of the match pass of the Four-Pass Check: an article must match its noun, and a preposition must match its partner. The rules belong to Chapter 5 (articles) and Chapter 7 (prepositions).

Preposition partners are learned in pairs. These are the pairs exam items test most often.

Some forms look like slips and are not. A sentence may end with a preposition: What are you looking at? is standard (Chapter 7, S21). Different from, different than and different to are all standard (Chapter 7, S29). A or an follows the sound, not the letter, so an hour, an MLA and a university are all right.

Picture the little words as the screws in a bookshelf. Nobody admires the screws, and from a distance you cannot see them. But one missing screw makes a shelf lean, and one screw in the wrong hole stops a shelf from fitting. Checking the little words is walking round the shelf with a screwdriver: slowly, one joint at a time, looking at the pieces everyone else skips.

You have now checked verbs, pronouns and the little words. The next section moves on to a family where one letter or one apostrophe makes the slip: plurals and possessives. Two apple's, the girls bag and informations each look almost right, and the check is to ask whether the word means more than one or shows an owner.

Here is the hard case: the same noun with the and without it, both right. The honesty is important in any friendship. The honesty of the witness surprised the court. The first sentence has a slip. Honesty here is honesty in general, an abstract idea, and English names a general abstract idea without an article: Honesty is important in any friendship. The second sentence is standard. Of the witness makes this honesty specific - one person's honesty, in one case - and a specific thing takes the. So the check is not 'Never put the before honesty'. It is 'Is this noun general, or has the sentence made it specific?' A phrase such as of the witness, that you showed or in this story makes a general noun specific, and then the is right. The same test settles a class of things. "The tiger is a wild animal" uses the for the whole class and is standard. "Tigers are wild animals" is standard too. A careful item never keys either. It keys only the clear case: the before a general abstract noun with nothing to make it specific.

The rule of a before a consonant sound and an before a vowel sound has moved words around. An apron was once a napron: people heard a napron as an apron so often that the n jumped to the article. An adder, the snake, was once a nadder in the same way. And the jump went the other way too: a nickname began as an ekename, an 'extra name'. Many languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Russian and Japanese, have no words that do exactly the job of a and the. Speakers of those languages learn articles as a new system, which is one reason article slips appear so often in exam English everywhere in the world, not only in India.

This section finds slips; articles are taught in Chapter 5 and preposition partners in Chapter 7. A sentence that ends with a preposition is standard. Different from, than and to are all standard. The before a general noun is keyed only when nothing in the sentence makes the noun specific. Discuss about and similar extra prepositions are keyed only under a stem that names exam or formal English. Missing words are tested by choice items, never by tap.

1. Slow down on a, an, the and every preposition.
2. Give a singular countable noun an article, or check why it has none.
3. Put the before a superlative: the best, the tallest.
4. Choose a or an by the sound: an hour, a uniform.
5. Leave the off a general abstract noun: honesty, patience.
6. Check each preposition against its partner: good at, afraid of.
7. In exam English, drop about after discuss.
8. Leave a final preposition alone.

• Nandini is best singer in the choir.
• We discussed about the school trip in the assembly.
• Vikram is good in maths.
• Mrs Hill says that the honesty matters most in a friendship.
• Which shelf did Harry put the book on?
• Maria waited for an hour at the bus stop in Manila.

• My uncle is an MLA from Bihar.
• Sunita is married with a doctor from Kolkata.
• Our watchman is a honest man.
• The train arrived to London at noon.
• Jack plays the piano, and Lily plays cricket.
• Kofi is afraid from the dark.

Plural and possessive slips

In the Four-Pass Check, plurals and owners sit where two passes meet: the match pass checks that each noun matches how many things it names, and the mark pass checks the apostrophe - owner or not.

Two questions settle every case: One or more? Then: Does it own the next word? A plain plural takes no apostrophe. An owner takes one, right after the owner's full word.

These slips hide in a few familiar places. Knowing the places makes them quick to find.

An uncountable noun such as information, furniture, luggage, advice or equipment has no plural in standard English, so it takes a singular verb too: the information is ready (ch12 S18). To count it, add a counting word: two pieces of furniture, a piece of advice.

Picture every word ending in s as a parcel at a post office counter. Before you stamp it, you ask one question: is this a bag holding several things, or a label saying whose it is? A bag of several things needs no stamp - apples, buses, children. A label needs the owner's stamp, the apostrophe, placed right after the owner's full word: the girl's, the girls', the children's. The stamp never goes on a bag, and never in the middle of a word.

You can now check plurals and owners in the match and mark passes, with two questions for every word ending in s. The next section keeps the apostrophe in view but moves to words that sound exactly alike and mean different things: its and it's, their, there and they're, your and you're, to, too and two. The ear is no help there either; only the meaning is.

Here is the hard case: a sentence that is correct both with and without the apostrophe moved. Compare these two sentences. My sister's friends came for lunch. My sisters' friends came for lunch. Which one has the slip? Neither. The first means one sister; the second means two or more sisters. Both are correct English, and the apostrophe's place is the only thing that tells the reader how many sisters there are. So you cannot find this kind of slip from the sentence alone. You need a fact from outside it: the story says there is one sister, or the stem says "Meera has three sisters". Only then can one version be wrong. That is why fair items in this section always tell you how many owners there are, and why the Four-Pass Check reads an apostrophe against the facts: the word must match them. If an item does not tell you how many owners there are, and both places of the apostrophe make sense, the fair answer is No error.

The apostrophe on a plain plural is so common on market signs that British writers gave it a name: the greengrocer's apostrophe, after stalls selling apple's and potato's. The name itself is correct - the apostrophe in greengrocer's shows the apostrophe belongs to the greengrocer. The slip has a long history. Some printers in the 1600s and 1700s put an apostrophe in plurals of words that end in a vowel, such as idea's, to help readers say them. The rule changed; the habit never quite died. Sheep, deer and fish can be singular or plural with no change at all, which is why two sheeps looks odd to a careful reader: the word was already plural.

This section checks plural and possessive slips; it does not teach the rules again. Plural spellings and irregular plurals belong to Chapter 1 (Nouns); one owner, many owners, joint owners and names in s belong to Chapter 17. James's and James' are both standard (ch17 S12) and are never keyed. Its and it's are a sound-alike pair and wait for S17. Plurals of letters and years, such as the 1990s, are not tested here.

1. In the match and mark passes, stop at every word ending in s, s' or 's.
2. Ask first: one or more?
3. Then ask: does it own the next word?
4. A plain plural takes no apostrophe: apples, buses, the Sharmas.
5. One owner: add 's - the girl's bag.
6. A plural ending in s: add only the apostrophe - the girls' hostel.
7. A plural not ending in s: add 's - the children's park.
8. Uncountable nouns take no s: information, furniture, luggage, advice.
9. Leave James's and James' alone; both are standard.

• Mum bought six mango's from the fruit seller in Lucknow.
• Kabir borrowed the girls bag for the trip to Shimla.
• The Principal's office is next to the teachers' staffroom.
• The childrens' coats were hung on the pegs by the door.
• We need more informations about the match in Leeds.
• The Nakamuras' garden in Osaka is full of plum trees.

• The luggages were loaded onto the bus for Jaipur.
• The women's hockey team from Ranchi won the cup.
• My uncle's shop sells toys and my aunts shop sells books.
• Three sheeps were grazing in the farmer's field.
• James's bike was chained to the railings outside.
• Every Sunday the Mendoza's visit their grandparents in Lima.

Sound-alike words: their, there, its, it's

Sound-alike slips belong to the sense pass: they pass the verb and match passes, and only meaning catches them.

Three tests settle almost every sound-alike word.

The swap test is quick for there and their: if here fits, write there (there is milk, put it there); if our fits, write their (their bags). If they are fits, write they're.

Whose and who's work the same way: who's is who is or who has; whose asks about an owner - whose coat is this?

Picture twins in the same school uniform. From across the playground you cannot tell them apart; their voices sound the same too. But ask each one a question - what is your name, which class are you in? - and the answer tells you at once. Sound-alike words are twins. You cannot sort them by looking or listening. You sort them by asking each one its job: are you it is, or an owner? a place, or belonging to them?

You can now check sound-alike words by meaning in the sense pass. The next section moves to the mark pass: capitals and end marks. Names, days, languages and titles take capitals; each sentence type takes its own end mark. Like sound-alikes, these slips cannot be heard - but unlike them, they cannot be tapped either, so you will judge them by choosing the version that is written correctly.

Here is the hard case: it's standing for it has, not it is. Compare these two sentences. It's been a long day. The city has lost its oldest cinema. Try the say-it-in-full test on the first: it is been a long day. That fails, so a learner may change it's to its. But it's also stands for it has: it has been a long day. That works, so it's is correct. Now try the second: the city has lost it is oldest cinema, or it has oldest cinema. Both fail, so its - the owner - is correct. So the test has two parts. Try it is, then try it has. If either one makes sense, it's is right. If neither does, the word is its. The same is true of who's, which can be who is or who has: who's seen my pen? That is why this section never keys it's as wrong until both full forms have failed, and why the sense pass reads the whole sentence before deciding.

Its, the owner word, is one of a family that takes no apostrophe: his, hers, ours, yours, theirs, its. None of them needs one, because the word itself already means belonging to. That is why hers's and your's are never standard. Sound-alike words have a name: homophones, from Greek words meaning same and sound. English has hundreds of them - right, write and rite; peace and piece; flour and flower. Spellcheckers cannot catch most homophone slips, because every one of them is a real word. The only checker that works is the one in your head that asks what the word means.

This section checks sound-alike slips; the apostrophe rules for its, it's, your, you're, their and they're are Chapter 17's (S5, S14). Contractions and full forms are both standard (ch17 S27) and never keyed. Harder pairs - affect and effect, principal and principle, stationary and stationery - wait for Craft S26. Tap items key the wrong word as it appears, and only when it is the one copy of that word in the sentence.

1. In the sense pass, stop at every sound-alike word.
2. For an apostrophe form, say it in full: it is, it has, you are, they are.
3. If it's fails as both it is and it has, write its.
4. For there and their, swap in here or our.
5. Too means also or more than enough; two is the number.
6. Then is time; than compares.
7. Loose is not tight; lose is fail to keep or find.
8. Do not trust your ear or the spellchecker for these words.
9. Leave a correct contraction alone; it is not an error.

• The puppy wagged it's tail when Anjali came home.
• Your going to love the new library in Kochi.
• The twins said they're bags were too heavy for the stairs.
• There are two pies on the table, and Tom wants one too.
• My shoe is so lose that it slipped off in the park.
• Lima is bigger then Cusco, but Cusco is much higher.

• Its been raining in Mumbai since the morning.
• The team lost its first match but won the next two.
• Nikhil ate two samosas and wanted a third one to.
• Whose coat is this? It's Emily's.
• Please let me know weather you can come on Friday.
• Were going to Seoul in May to visit our cousins.

Capitals and end marks

Capitals and end marks belong to the mark pass. Two checks cover them.

A tap cannot show a capital or a full stop, so these slips are tested by comparing versions: which one is written correctly? Read the choices side by side, and look only at the capitals and the last mark.

Picture a sentence as a train. The engine at the front always wears a capital letter, and the guard's van at the back carries the end mark - a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark, chosen by the kind of journey. In between, only the named carriages - Asha, Pune, Monday, Hindi - wear capitals on their doors. The mark pass walks the platform once: engine, named doors, guard's van.

You can now run the verb pass, the match pass, the sense pass and the mark pass, and name what each one finds. The next section turns to the last step of the Four-Pass Check: deciding. After all four passes find nothing, the right answer is No error - and you will learn to choose it with confidence, not as a last resort.

Here is the hard case: a sentence that looks like a question but is not asking one. Compare these three. Where is the library? Can you tell me where the library is? I wonder where the library is. All three are about where the library is. The first asks directly, so it takes a question mark. The second also asks - Can you tell me is a question - so it takes a question mark too, even though where the library is sits inside it. The third does not ask anyone anything; it states what I wonder. It ends with a full stop. The test is not whether the sentence contains a question word. It is whether the whole sentence asks. Look at its first words: Where is, Can you, Do you ask; I wonder, She asked, Tell me report or command. And there is one more twist: a polite request such as "Could you pass the salt" may end with either mark (ch11 S19). So the mark pass keys a full stop after a true direct question, and a question mark after a reported one - never the choice after Could you.

Some languages use no capital letters at all. Hindi in Devanagari, Tamil, Arabic and Chinese have no separate capital forms, which is one reason capitals feel optional to many multilingual writers - the habit has to be learned for English alone. Spanish marks a question at both ends, with an upside-down question mark at the start: ¿Dónde estás? English keeps only the mark at the end, so the reader must spot a question from its first words. And one capital can change meaning completely: Polish (from Poland) and polish (for shoes), Turkey the country and turkey the bird.

This section checks capitals and end marks; it does not teach them again. Capitals belong to Chapter 18, and end marks by sentence type to Chapter 11 (S19). A polite Could you request with ? or ., the Principal or the principal, Dr or Dr., and capitals on timetables and headings are standard both ways and never keyed. Commas and splices belong to Chapter 16 and Craft S22. Slips here are tested by choosing a version, not by tapping.

1. Run the mark pass after the verb, match and sense passes, and never skip it.
2. Check the first word of every sentence for a capital.
3. Check every I.
4. Give names a capital: people, places, days, months, festivals, languages.
5. Keep seasons, kinds of thing and most subjects small.
6. Read the first words to decide whether a sentence really asks.
7. A reported question ends with a full stop.
8. Leave both-standard forms alone: Could you ... with ? or ., the Principal or the principal.

• on monday we speak hindi in our class.
• Is it going to rain in Guwahati today.
• Mrs Kapoor asked whether the bus had left.
• Could you close the window, please.
• My cousin and i visited York in June.
• We flew from Nairobi to Mombasa. the ride back was slower.

• Diwali usually falls in October or November.
• Did the Principal sign the forms.
• Arjun asked me where the library was?
• Our new neighbours have just moved here from wales.
• We have maths and English on Tuesdays.
• In brazil, most people speak Portuguese.

When to choose "No error"

No error is the answer when all four passes come back clean. The decision has an order.

A part that sounds unusual is not a reason. Only a broken rule is.

Most No error traps are forms that are standard both ways. They sound unusual to some readers, so they pull learners away from the right answer.

Wordy or informal sentences are not errors either. "At this point in time" is wordy (ch20), and "kids" is informal (ch22), but neither breaks a rule of grammar.

Picture a doctor with a checklist: temperature, pulse, breathing, blood pressure. When every reading is normal, the doctor does not invent an illness to have something to treat. The doctor writes "healthy" - and that is a skilled result, not a failure to find anything. No error is the healthy result of a Four-Pass Check. A doctor who always finds something wrong is not careful; they are simply wrong more often.

You can now run every pass and decide - one error, or none. The last section of Practice asks for something harder: explaining your evidence. For each error you mark, and each sentence you leave alone, you will name the pass that found it, the rule it breaks and the chapter that owns the rule - or say which pass cleared it.

Here is the hard case: a sentence with one both-standard form and one real error, side by side. (A) The committee have / (B) decided that / (C) each of the members / (D) are to vote. / (E) No error Part A looks suspicious: committee is one group, so should it be has? No - a collective noun takes a singular or a plural verb in standard English (ch12 S17). Part A is a choice. A learner who stops here and marks A has keyed a choice as an error. Keep going. Part D: are to vote. What is its subject? Not members - the true subject is each, and each is singular (ch12 S16). So each of the members is to vote. Part D breaks a rule. Two lessons sit in this one item. First, a both-standard form is never the error, however it sounds. Second, finding one suspicious part is not the end of the check: run all four passes on every part before you decide. And if part D had read is to vote, the only suspicious part left would be the choice in A - and the answer would be No error.

The idea that a sentence must not end with a preposition was popularised by writers in the 1600s and 1700s who admired Latin, where a preposition cannot sit at the end. English never followed Latin here, and careful writers have ended sentences with prepositions for centuries. Starting a sentence with And or But is just as old: many sentences in English translations of the Bible begin with And. Some rules taught as absolute were only ever preferences - which is exactly why a good error item leaves them alone, and why No error is sometimes the bravest answer.

This section teaches the decision, not the rules. Each both-standard form belongs to its own chapter: ch12 S17, ch07 S21, ch21 S18, ch14 S13, ch06 S29, ch16 S11. Wordy and informal sentences are not grammar errors (ch20; ch22) and are keyed No error here. Myths such as never ending with a preposition are studied in Master (S32), and judging whether an item itself is fair is Master S37.

1. Run all four passes before you decide: verb, match, mark, sense.
2. Choose No error only when every pass finds nothing.
3. Then choose it with confidence.
4. Never pick a part because it sounds unusual.
5. Before you mark a part, ask: rule or choice?
6. Know the both-standard forms: the team has or have, a final preposition, And or But openers, singular they, a split infinitive, the serial comma.
7. Wordy or informal is not wrong.
8. Do not count how long it is since No error was the answer.

• The team have won their match against Kolkata.
• Who are you waiting for, Meenal?
• The list of prizes were read out at the end of Annual Day.
• And then the lights went out.
• Every student must bring their own lunch on Friday.
• Our guide in Cairo spoke slowly, clearly and kindly.

• My grandmother, who lives in Madurai, visits us every summer.
• Priya and Dev has finished the science project.
• The data is ready for the meeting in Pune.
• I decided to quickly check the map again.
• Tom's parents was waiting at the school gate.
• Ana, Luis and Marta cooked dinner for us in Madrid.

Explain your evidence

To explain a decision, say what the Four-Pass Check found. Every section of Practice has its own kind of evidence.

A good explanation has four parts, and each one can be checked.

For No error, the evidence is the list of passes that came back clean, plus a note on any part that sounds unusual: "And at the start - a choice (ch21 S18)."

Some reasons look like evidence but are not: it sounds wrong; the longest part usually hides the error; No error has not come up for a while; never end a sentence with a preposition. The first is a feeling, the next two are test-taking tricks and the last is a usage myth.

Picture yourself as a referee who must show the replay. Blowing the whistle is not enough; the referee points to the screen - the foot was over the line, here, at this moment - and everyone watching can see the same thing. Your evidence is the replay: this word, this pass, this rule, this chapter. A referee who says "it felt like a foul" loses the crowd, even on the days the call happens to be right.

Practice has given you the Four-Pass Check with a name for everything it finds: agreement, tense, pronoun, article, preposition, plural, owner, sound-alike, capital, end mark - and No error. Craft moves to harder slips that sit between sentences and inside their shapes. It begins with run-ons and fragments: a sentence that runs two sentences together, and a piece that is not a sentence at all.

Here is the hard case: two explanations that mark the same word, where only one is evidence. "Each of the students have a locker." Explanation 1: have is wrong because students is plural and the verb should match it. Explanation 2: have is wrong because the true subject is each, which is singular (ch12 S16); the fix is has. Both mark have. Both say have is wrong. But explanation 1 is not evidence - it is backwards. If the verb should match students, then have would be right. Explanation 1 got the right answer by accident. The test of evidence is this: does it still give the right answer when the sentence changes? Try "All of the students have a locker." Explanation 2 still works: the true subject is all of the students, plural, so have is right. Explanation 1 happens to agree here too, but in "The box of pencils are" it would defend are. So a reason is evidence only when it names the rule that actually decides - the true subject, the time, the case, the partner, the owner, the meaning, the name - and would decide the next sentence correctly too.

Editors and proofreaders have long used a set of standard marks to point at an error and show its fix in one stroke - a caret for a missing word, a line through a word to delete it. The marks are a kind of evidence: they show exactly where and what. Teachers use evidence the same way when they mark work: a code in the margin - often a letter for agreement, tense or spelling - tells the writer which rule to check. And the idea that a mistake can teach you something is old: learners' errors show which rules they are still building, which is why naming the rule matters more than the red mark.

This section asks for evidence across Practice (S11-S19). It adds no new rules; each rule stays in its chapter. Both-standard forms stay both standard: the team has or have, singular they, And or But openers, a final preposition, the serial comma, contractions, the Principal, a polite Could you with ? or . Run-ons, splices, dangling modifiers and broken parallels begin in Craft (S21-S24).

1. Name the exact word or part that holds the slip.
2. Name the pass that found it: verb, match, mark or sense.
3. Name the rule in a few words: true subject, past time, object case.
4. Name the chapter that owns the rule.
5. Give the one change that fixes it.
6. For No error, list the passes that came back clean.
7. Call a both-standard form a choice, with its chapter.
8. Reject feelings, test tricks and usage myths as reasons.
9. Check your reason would still work if the sentence changed.

• The bunch of bananas are on the kitchen shelf.
• Yesterday Farhan goes to the dentist in Bhopal.
• The teacher gave Meera and I a prize.
• Mia is best swimmer in the club.
• Oliver is very good in chess.
• We visited the pyramids in egypt last year.

• Everyone in Class 7 has handed in their project.
• The womens' hostel is near the main gate.
• Its time to leave for the station, Kabir.
• Did you remember to post the letter.
• Hannah wants to know where the bus stop is.
• Some informations were missing from the form in Lagos.

Writing with intent · ages 12–16

Run-ons and fragments

A written sentence needs at least one main clause: a subject and a finite verb that can stand alone. Two main clauses need a join. Both checks happen on the mark pass of the Four-Pass Check.

The rules themselves belong to Sentence Structure (ch08 S17 for fragments, ch08 S18 for run-ons). This section is about finding them fast in writing that hides them.

Fragments come in three common shapes, and run-ons in one.

The fastest fix for a fragment is usually to join it to the sentence before or after it: We went in, although the shop was nearly empty. The fastest fix for a run-on is a full stop, a semicolon or a joining word such as and, but or so. A comma alone is not enough; that slip has its own name and its own section next.

Watch the words that make a clause lean: because, although, when, if, since, while, unless, which, who. When a stretch between two full stops starts with one of them and has no other clause, it is a fragment.

Think of each main clause as a train carriage with its own engine: it can run on the track alone. A fragment is a carriage with no engine - it looks like part of a train but cannot move by itself. A run-on is two engines pushed nose to tail with no coupling between them. The fix for one is to hook it to a train; the fix for the other is a coupling - a joining word or a semicolon - or two separate tracks.

In Practice you checked single words: a verb that did not agree, a pronoun in the wrong case, a missing article. Craft now checks something bigger - whether a sentence is built at all. A fragment and a run-on are not one wrong word; they are a wrong boundary. The next section looks at the commonest wrong boundary of all: two sentences joined by a comma alone.

Here is the case that takes judgement: a fragment that is not a slip. Ananya writes a short story for the school magazine. It opens: 'The lights went out. A scream. Then nothing.' 'A scream' has no verb; 'Then nothing' has no verb either. Are they errors? In a story, no. A writer may use a fragment on purpose to slow the reader down or to land a moment, and Sentence Structure (ch08 S27) treats this as a choice. The fragments here are short, deliberate and surrounded by complete sentences, and the reader never waits for a missing half. Now put the same shape in a science answer: 'Photosynthesis needs light. And carbon dioxide.' The reader of a science answer expects complete sentences, and an exam item that names formal writing keys it as a fragment. The fix is one join: 'Photosynthesis needs light and carbon dioxide.' So the same shape is a choice in one place and an error in another. That is why careful items name the writing: 'In a formal answer', 'In exam English'. When a stem names a story, a fragment for effect is left alone; when it names formal writing, it is fixed.

Some of the most famous openings in writing are fragments, and some of the longest sentences in good books are perfectly correct. A single sentence in a novel can run for a page, held together by commas, semicolons and joining words, and never once become a run-on, because every main clause is properly joined to the next. Meanwhile a six-word text message - 'bus is late I will walk' - is a run-on. That is why the length test fails. Run-on does not mean 'runs on too long'. It means two sentences that run into each other with nothing in between. A run-on can be short, and a long sentence can be perfect.

A short sentence is not a fragment. A command such as 'Stop.' or 'Sit down.' has an understood subject, you, and is complete. A fragment used for effect in a story, a poem, an advertisement or a speech is a choice (ch08 S27) and is never keyed as an error; items key fragments and run-ons only where the stem names formal, exam or academic writing. A comma alone between two main clauses is a comma splice, the next section; this section keys only run-ons with no mark at all. Whether to use a full stop, a semicolon or a joining word is a choice among correct fixes; none is keyed over another.

1. Judge a sentence by its clauses, never by its length.
2. Between two full stops, find the main clause: a subject and a finite verb that can stand alone.
3. Watch the leaning words - because, although, when, if, which, who - at the start of a short stretch.
4. Check that an -ing phrase has a finite verb somewhere in its sentence.
5. Where two main clauses meet, look for a join: a full stop, a semicolon, or and, but or so.
6. Fix a fragment by joining it to its neighbour; fix a run-on with a full stop, a semicolon or a joining word.
7. Leave short complete sentences and story fragments alone.
8. Read the stem: formal or exam writing keys the slip; a story may choose it.

• From Ishaan's formal report: The trip was postponed. Because the bus was late.
• From Priya's exam answer: The river rose overnight the village moved to higher ground.
• Kavya laughed.
• Oliver, who had trained all winter and never missed a session, won the race in the rain.
• From Grace's short story: The door creaked. Footsteps. Then silence.
• From Carlos's formal letter: Hoping to hear from you soon.

• From Aditya's exam answer: Photosynthesis takes place in the leaves. Which contain chlorophyll.
• From Sneha's lab report: The results were clear the plants in sunlight grew taller.
• From Rohan's report: The hall was full, so the assembly moved outside.
• From Amelia's essay: Although the plan was simple, it failed.
• From Jack's story: Rain. Rain all week.
• From Yuki's report: The town festival, which began more than seventy years ago and now draws visitors from far away.

Comma splices

A comma alone cannot join two main clauses. Find the comma, then check both sides: if each could stand alone and no joining word follows the comma, it is a splice. This is the mark pass of the Four-Pass Check.

The rule belongs to Commas & Semicolons (ch16 S15 for the splice, ch16 S22 for however and therefore). All three fixes are standard; choose by how closely the two ideas belong together.

Not every comma between two clauses is a splice. The test is whether both sides are main clauses and nothing joins them.

The joining words that can follow a comma are and, but, or, nor, for, so and yet. Words such as however, therefore, moreover, nevertheless and then join ideas in meaning but not in grammar, so they need a full stop or a semicolon before them.

A splice, to a sailor, joins two ropes by weaving their strands together, and it holds. A comma splice is two ropes laid end to end with a single thread tied round the middle - it looks joined but will not take the pull. Replace the thread with a knot (and, but, so), a clip (a semicolon), or simply keep two separate ropes (a full stop).

The last section found run-ons, where two main clauses meet with no mark at all. A comma splice is the same slip with a comma added: it looks mended and is not. The next section moves from the joints between clauses to the words inside them, and to a slip that can make a sentence say something absurd - a modifier attached to the wrong word.

Here is the case that takes judgement: the same word, however, in two sentences - one correct, one a splice. The match, however, went ahead. It rained all morning, however the match went ahead. In the first, however sits in the middle of one main clause, set off by two commas. There is only one clause, so there is nothing to splice. In the second, there are two main clauses: It rained all morning and the match went ahead. However means a turn, but grammatically it is an adverb, not a joining word, so the only thing between the clauses is a comma. That is a splice. The fix puts a semicolon or a full stop before however: 'It rained all morning; however, the match went ahead.' The test is not whether however is present but how many main clauses there are. Cover however and its commas. If one sentence remains, the commas are fine. If two sentences remain, a comma alone is joining them. This is why careful items ask 'Which version is correctly punctuated?' and give four versions that differ in one mark. Read each version for its clauses first, and only then look at the marks.

The word splice comes from rope-making and sailing. A sailor splices two ropes by unpicking their ends and weaving the strands into each other, and a good splice is strong enough to hold a ship. A comma splice is named for the opposite reason. The comma looks like a join but carries none of the weight, so the reader stumbles at the point where the second sentence begins. And yet published fiction uses short splices on purpose: 'It was not a game, it was a test.' The quick rhythm is the point. The same shape in an exam answer is keyed as a splice, because an exam answer is judged by the standard for formal writing, not the freedom of a story.

Three fixes are standard - a full stop, a semicolon, or a comma with a joining word - and none is keyed over another. A comma before a short and-clause is optional (ch16) and is never keyed as missing or extra. A comma after an opening clause ('When it rained, we stayed in.') is correct and is not a splice. A short splice in fiction, a speech or a poem can be a choice (ch16 S35); items key splices only where the stem names formal or exam writing. Because the slip is a mark, it is never tested by tapping; items use MCQ and sort.

1. At every comma, check both sides: could each stand alone as a sentence?
2. If both could, look at the word after the comma: and, but, or, nor, for, so or yet?
3. If there is no joining word, it is a splice.
4. Treat however, therefore, moreover, nevertheless and then as adverbs, not joining words.
5. Cover a mid-sentence however and its commas; if one sentence remains, leave it.
6. Fix with a full stop, a semicolon, or a joining word; all three are standard.
7. Leave alone a comma after an opening clause and a comma before a short and.
8. Read the stem: formal writing keys a splice; a story may choose one.

• From Meera's exam answer: The bus was late, we missed the first bell.
• From Harsh's essay: It rained all morning, however the match went ahead.
• From Divya's report: The shop was closed, so we came home.
• From Thomas's essay: The hall was cold; nobody took off a coat.
• From Lily's story: The sea was calm, the sky was clear.
• From Amara's report: We cleaned the lab and we returned the keys.

• From Arjun's exam answer: Mumbai is on the coast, it has a busy port.
• From Pooja's letter to a publisher: Thank you for the books, they arrived on Monday.
• From Zoya's report: The fan stopped, and the room grew hot.
• From Harry's essay: The plan failed; moreover, it cost a great deal.
• From Sophie's story: It was not a game, it was a test.
• From Mateo's report: When the lights flickered, we left the hall.

Misplaced and dangling modifiers

A modifier must sit next to the word it describes. An opening phrase attaches to the subject straight after the comma. This is the match pass of the Four-Pass Check: ask who or what the modifier describes.

Where a modifier goes belongs to Phrases (ch09 S27); dangling openers to Sentence Structure (ch08 S29); only and almost to Adverbs (ch06 S17). This section is about catching the slip fast.

Two fixes cover almost every case.

For a misplaced phrase, move it next to its word: 'Vikram found a gold ring walking along the beach' becomes 'Walking along the beach, Vikram found a gold ring.'

The limiting words - only, almost, nearly, just, even - attach to what follows them. Moving them can change the meaning: 'Only I saw the film' (nobody else did); 'I saw only the film' (nothing else). In everyday English, 'I only saw the film' is standard, and the meaning is usually clear from context. Items key only when the stem states a meaning that its position does not give.

Think of a modifier as a name tag with a short string. It can only hang on the person standing right next to it. A dangling opener is a name tag held out at the front of a queue: it hangs on whoever steps up first after the comma. If the first in line is the rain, the rain gets the tag Walking to school. Move the tag, or send the right person to the front.

The last two sections checked the joints between clauses - run-ons, fragments and splices - on the mark pass. This section moves to the match pass: inside the clause, does each describing phrase match the word it describes? The next section stays on the match pass and checks another kind of matching: the items of a list or a pair, which must share one shape.

Here is the case that takes judgement: the word only. Only Rukhsar ate one samosa. (Nobody else ate one.) Rukhsar ate only one samosa. (One, not two.) Rukhsar only ate one samosa. (In everyday English, usually the same as the second.) Some students are taught that the third sentence is always wrong, because only should sit next to the word it limits. But in speech and in most writing, only before the verb is standard, and the context makes the meaning clear. Adverbs (ch06 S17) treats it as a choice, and careful items never key it just for its position. When does only become an error? When the position gives a meaning the writer did not intend, and the stem says what was intended. 'Only Rukhsar ate one samosa' for a writer who means Rukhsar had just one, not two - and her brother had one too - is keyed: the only now says nobody else ate one, which is false. So the test for only is not 'is it next to its word?' but 'does its position say what the writer meant?' Read the stem for the intended meaning, then read the sentence for the meaning it actually gives.

Dangling and misplaced modifiers are a favourite of people who collect funny notices, because they turn serious sentences into pictures. Wanted: a table for a family with four strong legs. For sale: a school bag by a student with two zipped pockets. Neither writer meant a family with legs or a student with pockets, and every reader knows it. But the reader has to pause and repair the sentence - and in a report, a lab write-up or a legal notice, a reader who repairs it wrongly may act on the wrong meaning. That is why a modifier slip ranks above many other slips. A wrong comma rarely changes what happened; a modifier in the wrong place can change who did it.

Only, just and even before the verb are standard in everyday English ('Deepa only drinks tea') and are keyed only when the stem states a meaning that the position does not give (ch06 S17). An opening phrase that attaches to the subject after the comma is correct, however long it is. Some fixed openers - 'Generally speaking', 'Considering the weather', 'Judging by the results' - are standard with any subject and are never keyed. Where a phrase could attach to either of two nouns and the stem does not say which is meant, the item is rewritten, not keyed.

1. For every opening phrase, find the first noun or pronoun after the comma.
2. Ask: is that the one doing the action in the phrase?
3. Watch for a passive after an opener - it often hides the doer.
4. For a phrase at the end, check which noun it sits beside.
5. Fix by naming the doer after the comma, turning the opener into a clause, or moving the phrase next to its word.
6. Read almost, nearly and just with the word after them, and check the meaning.
7. Leave everyday 'only' before a verb alone unless the stem states a different meaning.
8. Leave standard fixed openers such as 'Generally speaking' alone.

• From Rahul's diary: Walking to school, the rain started.
• Nikhil ate nine of the ten slices, but the class diary says: Nikhil almost ate the whole pizza.
• Anita only reads novels.
• Having finished the test, Ella handed in the paper.
• From George's review: The museum showed a painting to the visitors covered in dust.
• From Lucia's report: After waiting an hour, the doctor finally saw us.

• From Shreya's report: While doing homework, the lights went out.
• From Karthik's notice: We sold cakes to parents in paper bags.
• From a chat: Rukhsar only ate one samosa.
• From Freya's story: Looking out of the window, Freya saw the first snow.
• From Jacob's review: The chef served soup to the guests in large bowls.
• From Hana's lab report: Hurrying to the lab, the test tubes were dropped.

Parallel slips in lists and pairs

Items joined by and, or, than or a pair such as not only ... but also share one grammatical shape. On the match pass of the Four-Pass Check, find the items and check each against the first.

The rule belongs to Parallel Structure (ch15 S5 for lists, S12 for pairs, S15 for comparisons, S22 for either ... or placement). This section is about catching the slip that hides among correct words.

Pairs such as both ... and, either ... or and not only ... but also need the same shape after each half. The trap is where the first half sits.

Two things are not slips. First, to may be repeated before each item or used once: 'to travel, to learn and to make friends' and 'to travel, learn and make friends' are both standard. Second, a comma before the and in a list is a choice (ch16 S11), never a parallel slip.

Parallel means the same shape, not the same length. 'Priya is clever, kind and extremely good at explaining things' is parallel: three adjective phrases, one of them longer.

Think of a list as a row of railway coaches coupled to one engine. Every coach must fit the same track gauge. Swimming and cycling run on the -ing track; to read runs on a different gauge, so the train jolts at that coach. You do not rebuild the train - you change the one coach that does not fit the rails.

The last section matched a modifier to the word it describes. This section matches the items of a list or a pair to each other - the same match pass, applied to a pattern rather than a pair of words. The next section steps back from rules altogether and asks which slips are not errors at all: a wordy phrase, an informal word, or a sentence that is simply wrong.

Here is the case that takes judgement: a list whose items look different but share one shape. Priya is clever, kind and extremely good at explaining things. The third item is much longer than the first two. Is it a broken parallel? No. Clever, kind and extremely good at explaining things are all adjectives or adjective phrases: each fits after 'Priya is'. Parallel means the same grammatical shape, not the same number of words. Now compare: Priya is clever, kind and explains things well. The third item is a verb phrase, and it does not fit after 'Priya is' - 'Priya is explains things well' is not English. That is the broken one. The quick test is to read each item alone with the words that come before the list. 'Priya is clever.' 'Priya is kind.' 'Priya is extremely good at explaining things.' All three work, so the list is parallel. 'Priya is explains things well' does not work, so that item breaks the pattern. The same test settles pairs: 'Ishita did well in maths' and 'Ishita did well science' - the second fails, so in is missing. Read each item with the shared start, and the slip shows itself.

Many of the lines people remember longest are built in parallel. A motto, a slogan or a line in a speech often lists three things in one shape, because the pattern makes it easy to say, easy to hear and easy to remember. Read that last sentence again: easy to say, easy to hear, easy to remember. The pattern carries the meaning. Now break it: easy to say, hearing it is easy, and memorable. The meaning is the same, and the line is gone. That is why editors check parallel structure first in speeches and slogans, and why exam items test it: a broken parallel is not only a rule broken, it is a line made harder to follow.

Repeating to before each item ('to travel, to learn and to make friends') or using it once ('to travel, learn and make friends') is both-standard and never keyed. The serial comma, present or absent, is a choice (ch16 S11), not a parallel slip. Parallel means the same shape, not the same length: a longer phrase of the same kind is parallel. Where a missing word breaks the parallel, the item is tested by MCQ, because there is no wrong word to tap. Items key a broken parallel only when exactly one item breaks the pattern.

1. Find every list and every pair joined by and, or, but, than, both ... and, either ... or or not only ... but also.
2. Write down the first word of each item and compare the shapes.
3. Read each item alone with the words that come before the list.
4. Change only the item that does not fit.
5. For a pair, put its first half just before the shape it shares with the second.
6. Check that the second half of a pair has every word the first half has - in, to, for.
7. Leave a repeated or single to alone, and a comma before and.
8. Do not mistake a longer item of the same shape for a broken one.

• Sana likes swimming, to read and cycling.
• From Ishita's report card comment: Ishita did well not only in maths but also science.
• Dev enjoys hiking, painting and playing the tabla.
• Isla wanted to travel, to learn and to make friends.
• From Oscar's review: The film was long, slow and it had too many songs.
• From Kenji's report: The volunteers either will paint the fence or the gate.

• From Aarti's speech: We came here to learn, to grow and for making friends.
• From Siddhant's report: The scheme aims to reduce waste and saving water.
• From Nandini's report: Students can walk, cycle or take the school bus.
• From Charlie's essay: Reading widely and writing daily both build a vocabulary.
• From Emily's letter: I would rather walk than taking the bus.
• From Omar's report: The festival is not only for children but also for adults.

Wordy, informal or wrong?

Three things can look like slips. Only one is an error. The Four-Pass Check ends with one question: is it a rule or a choice?

Wordy and informal sentences are standard English. In a grammar item they are 'No error', or a distractor explained 'not an error'. They are keyed only when the stem names the aim - 'Which word can be cut?' or 'Which word does not fit a formal report?' - and then the key follows Conciseness or Tone & Register, not grammar.

The stem tells you which question is being asked.

Two groups are never keyed as errors. Indian English words such as revert (reply) and prepone are standard. And many forms people call errors are choices: a contraction, a sentence starting with And or ending with a preposition, and a comma before and.

Real errors often hide among informal words. 'The kids think the park is way more bigger' has two informal words, kids and way, and one error, more.

Think of a tailor checking a new shirt. A loose thread is wordiness: trim it if you like, and the shirt still works. A casual fabric is register: fine for a picnic, less so for an interview, and still a proper shirt. A sleeve sewn on upside down is an error: the shirt does not work until it is fixed. A good tailor fixes the sleeve first and asks the customer about the rest.

The first four Craft sections found real errors at the joints, in modifiers and in lists. This section draws the line that keeps you from finding errors that are not there: wordy and informal are choices, fixed by an editor, and only a broken rule is keyed. The next section returns to real errors, in the harder sound-alike pairs such as affect and effect, principal and principle.

Here is the case that takes judgement: return back. In general English, 'We will return back on Monday' is wordy. Return already means go back, so back doubles it, and Conciseness (ch20 S4) cuts it. It is not a grammar error: the sentence is built correctly and the meaning is clear. In a grammar item with no stated standard, it is No error, or a distractor explained 'wordy - not an error'. But some exam items name a stricter standard. Under a stem such as 'In exam English, which phrase is non-standard?', return back may be keyed, alongside patterns such as discuss about and cope up with, which formal written English avoids. The key then follows the named standard, and the explanation says 'exam English uses return', never that a speaker is careless. So the same two words are wordy in one item and keyed in another. What decides is the stem. Read it before anything else: does it ask for a grammar error, a word to cut, a word that does not fit the reader, or a form that exam English treats as non-standard? The same care applies to kids: a grammar item leaves it alone, and a register item for a formal report keys it.

Many of the phrases people complain about most loudly are not grammar errors at all. Lists of 'annoying phrases' are full of padding - at this moment in time, each and every, past history - and informal words such as awesome. Every one of them is grammatical. They are complaints about length and register, and they are fair complaints for some readers. Meanwhile a real error such as 'more better' often goes unnoticed in speech, because the doubled comparative sounds emphatic. Double comparatives and superlatives appear in older English writing, when they were used for emphasis; standard English today uses one. The red pen and the grammar rule do not always point at the same words.

Wordy phrases (ch20) and informal words (ch22) are standard English; they are never keyed as grammar errors, only as No error items, as distractors explained 'not an error', or under a stem that names the aim. Return back, discuss about and cope up with are keyed non-standard only under a stem naming exam English (Master S33 takes this further). Indian English words such as revert (reply), prepone and co-brother are standard. Contractions, a sentence starting with And or ending with a preposition, and a comma before and are choices. The double comparative belongs to Adjectives (ch03).

1. Read the stem first: grammar, length, register or exam standard?
2. Run the four passes for the grammar error before looking at style.
3. Before keying, ask: is it a rule or a choice?
4. Label a doubled or padded phrase wordy, not wrong.
5. Label kids, awesome and gonna informal, not wrong.
6. Look for the real error behind the informal words that catch the eye.
7. Choose No error when a sentence is only wordy or informal.
8. Leave standard Indian English words such as revert and prepone alone.
9. Fix the errors first; then decide about length and register for the reader.

• From Raghav's email: We will return back on Monday.
• From Nisha's school report: The kids had a great time at the science fair.
• From Tejas's essay: The results of the test was announced.
• From Lucy's report: In order to finish on time, we started early.
• From Sam's essay: Their going to announce the results today.
• From Mei's email to a colleague: Could you pop the file into the shared folder?

• From Harini's notice: The meeting has been postponed to a later date.
• From Yash's essay: The list of winners were read out.
• From Meenal's email to a supplier: Kindly revert by Friday.
• From Jack's message to a cousin: gonna be late, sorry
• From Ruby's essay: Past history shows that the plan can work.
• From Diego's report: Yesterday the team plays its last match.

Harder confusables: affect, effect, principal, principle

A confusable is a word that sounds or looks like another but does a different job. In the Four-Pass Check it belongs to the sense pass: read the sentence for meaning and ask what job the slot needs.

A memory trick helps some learners: stationEry has an E for envelopes; a principAL is your pAL. But the trick only works if you stop to use it. The question does the real work: noun, verb or adjective?

Two pairs need more care, because both words in them can be standard in some slots.

So an item keys effect as wrong only in a slot that clearly means 'to change', and keys less as wrong only under a stem that names formal writing. The simple sound-alikes - their, there, they're; its, it's; to, too, two - belong to ch17 S5 and S14, and fewer and less to ch05 Articles & Determiners. This section trains the check, not the rule.

Think of two keys that look almost the same on one ring. Both are the right shape; both are shiny; each opens a different door. Grabbing the first key that feels right is how you end up locked out. The careful move is to look at the door first - is it the noun door, the verb door or the describing door? - and only then pick the key that fits it.

In Practice you checked the simple sound-alikes by meaning: their and there, its and it's, your and you're (S17). The harder pairs add one step. Their two words often differ not only in meaning but in word class: one is a noun and the other a verb, or one is an adjective. So the check becomes two questions in order: what does the sentence mean, and what job does this slot need?

Here is the case that takes judgement: the principal effect. The principal effect of the new bridge was a shorter journey to Guwahati. A quick reader who has just learnt the pairs may want to change both words. Principal? Isn't that a person? Effect? Isn't the verb affect? Run the check. The slot before 'effect' describes it - which effect? The main one. Principal as an adjective means 'main', so principal is right. Principle is only ever a noun, a rule or a belief; 'the principle effect' would put a noun where a describing word belongs. Now the slot after 'the principal'. It is the thing the sentence is about, a noun: the result of the bridge. The noun is effect. So effect is right too. The sentence has no error. Marking either word would be marking a standard form wrong, which in an exam loses the mark as surely as missing a real slip. The lesson reaches past this sentence. A confusable item is not solved by spotting a word from a famous pair. It is solved by asking what job the slot needs - and sometimes the answer is that the word already does it.

Stationery and stationary were once much closer than they look now. In medieval Latin, a stationarius was someone who stayed in one place - a trader with a fixed stall rather than a travelling seller. Many of the fixed-stall traders near universities sold books, paper and writing materials. So the seller who stood still gave English both words: stationary for not moving, and stationer for the person who sold paper - whose goods became stationery. The two spellings settled apart much later. Today one letter is all that separates a bus that is not moving from the pens in your pencil case - which is why the E-for-envelopes trick is so popular with teachers.

Items key a confusable only when the word does the wrong job in its sentence. Effect as a verb (to effect change) and affect as a noun in psychology are standard, so items key affect only in a clear noun slot and effect only where the meaning is plainly 'to change'. Principal as an adjective (the principal reason) is standard. Less with plural nouns is keyed only under a stem naming formal writing; less than 10 kg and 25 words or less are standard. British and American spellings (practise / practice as a verb, licence / license) are both standard and never keyed. All people and places in items are invented or used only as settings.

1. At every word from a confusable pair, stop and name the job its slot needs: noun, verb or adjective.
2. After a, the, no, any or big, expect a noun: effect, advice, principle, compliment.
3. After will, to, can or please, expect a verb: affect, advise, lose.
4. For a person who heads a school, write principal; for a rule or belief, principle.
5. For praise, write compliment; for something that completes, complement.
6. For paper and pens, stationery; for not moving, stationary.
7. Keep fewer for things you count in formal writing, and leave less than 10 kg alone.
8. Add the pairs you slip on to your own proofreading list.

• The new timetable had a big affect on our sleep.
• Mr Kulkarni is the principle of our school.
• Ananya bought pens and graph paper at the stationary shop near the station.
• My coach gave me some good advise before the final.
• The mint sauce was a perfect compliment to Emily's roast.
• Hiroshi paid Keiko a compliment on the speech.

• Please don't loose your hall ticket before the exam.
• The principal effect of the new bridge was a shorter journey to Guwahati.
• Rohit's school bag weighs less than 10 kg.
• Oliver's bus stayed stationery at the red light for five minutes.
• Grace asked the counsellor to advice on subjects for Year 12.
• Carlos sewed back a lose button on the school shirt.

Exam formats: spot, correct, choose the part

Every format tests the same skill: finding the one part that breaks a rule. The Four-Pass Check finds it; the instruction tells you how to give it.

Two formats allow No error: spot the error and choose the part, where (E) often says so. Passage editing usually says every line has an error, so No error is not an answer there unless the task says otherwise.

Each format has a trap of its own.

The rules behind the slips live in their own chapters - agreement in ch12, tense in ch13, pronouns in ch04 and ch14, articles in ch05, prepositions in ch07. This section is about the item, not the rule: how to read it, and what to write. Items here are original and describe formats in general; they do not copy any board's paper or marking scheme.

Think of one parcel and five counters at a post office. At one counter you hand over the parcel; at another you fill in only the address; at a third you tick a box; at a fourth you write what is missing from the label. The parcel is the same - the error you found. What changes is the form each counter asks you to fill in. Hand the wrong form to the counter, and the parcel goes nowhere.

In Practice you chose No error only after all four passes found nothing (S19) and explained each error with its pass and its chapter (S20). Exam formats add one step before the check: read the instruction and name the answer shape. After the check, one step more: write exactly that shape. The check in the middle does not change.

Here is the case that takes judgement: the same slip in two formats with different rules about No error. Item 1, choose the part: (A) Who are you / (B) going to the fair / (C) with on / (D) Saturday? / (E) No error Item 2, passage editing: 'Line 4: Who are you going to the fair with on Saturday?' The task says each line has one error. Run the four passes on the sentence. Verb: are going, with you - agreement is fine, and the tense fits a plan. Match: who for whom is standard in everyday writing (ch10 S24), and ending with a preposition is standard (ch07 S21). Marks: a question mark for a question. Sense: clear. In item 1 the answer is (E) No error. Choosing it is not giving up; it is what the check found. Item 2 is harder. The task promises an error in every line, and the check finds none. The honest reading is that the line has no error under the rules this chapter follows - so the fair move is to check the line once more, then, if the task allows a note, write that the line is correct. A careful item writer would not put a both-standard line in a task that promises an error in every line. The lesson: the check decides whether there is an error. The format decides only how to say so.

Many choose-the-part items in this style end with a fifth option, No error - and it is there for a reason. Without it, a learner who finds nothing wrong must still pick a part, and the item rewards guessing. With it, the item can test whether a learner leaves a correct sentence alone, which is half of what an editor does. That is why this chapter keys No error in about one item in five. A learner who never chooses it has learnt to hunt for faults that are not there. A learner who chooses it too often has stopped running the check. The fifth option looks like the easiest answer on the page. It is often the hardest one to choose with confidence.

Formats are described in general terms only. No item copies, paraphrases or cites a real paper, year or board key, and no claim is made about how any named exam marks answers. Items here key only rules owned by earlier chapters, as those chapters key them: a sentence ending with a preposition, who for whom, the team has or have and a sentence starting with And or But are standard and appear only as No error. Discuss about and since two years are keyed only under stems naming exam English. When a task promises an error in every line, the items here make sure there is one.

1. Read the instruction before the sentence, and name the answer shape: a word, a letter, a version, a pair or a missing word.
2. Run the Four-Pass Check the same way in every format, verb first.
3. In spot the error, give one word exactly as it appears.
4. In sentence correction, find the word that differs between versions and check only that.
5. In choose the part, choose No error only after all four passes find nothing.
6. In passage editing, write the wrong word and its fix; change one word per line.
7. In omission, look for the article, preposition or helping verb a rule needs.
8. Before moving on, check that your answer is in the shape the instruction asked for.

• Choose the part: (A) Each of the players / (B) have signed / (C) a form for / (D) the trip to Ooty. / (E) No error
• Passage editing, line 2: Last Sunday, Aditya's family visit the zoo in Mysuru.
• Omission, line 4: Meera wants to become engineer one day.
• Sentence correction: Jack and Lily goes to the same swimming club.
• Spot the error: Holly's team have won there first match of the season.
• Choose the part: (A) Yusuf and I / (B) waited at the gate / (C) until the bell / (D) rang at four. / (E) No error

• Sentence correction, in exam English: Kiran is working in this office since 2019.
• Passage editing, line 5: The children was excited about the trip to the fort.
• Choose the part: (A) Rohan's uncle gave / (B) Farah and I / (C) two tickets to / (D) the cricket match. / (E) No error
• Omission, line 1: Freddie went to library after school.
• Spot the error: Who is Amelia going to the fair with?
• Choose the part: (A) In Nairobi, the price / (B) of the new phones / (C) have gone up / (D) since March. / (E) No error

Errors that change the meaning

Every error breaks a rule, but not every error does the same harm. In the Four-Pass Check the sense pass asks what the sentence actually says - and that is where a meaning change shows.

A slip the reader can see through is still a slip, and an exam still keys it. But when you check your own writing, or have time for one fix, the meaning change comes first.

Some pairs are not errors at all: both versions are correct, and they say different things. The skill is reading each one exactly.

Where 'only' goes is a choice between meanings; 'I only ate one' is common and standard in speech, and exam items key it only where the stem shows which meaning was meant (ch06 S17). The commas around a relative clause belong to ch16 and ch10; the hyphen that joins a number to its unit belongs to ch19 Hyphens & Dashes S21. This section asks one thing of all of them: what does this version say, and is it what the writer meant?

Think of a doctor sorting patients by urgency. A scraped knee and a broken arm are both injuries, and both will be treated. But the broken arm goes first. A misspelling is the scraped knee: visible, worth fixing, not dangerous. A dropped not, a wrong date or a missing comma that changes who does what is the broken arm - the reader will act on it. Sort your slips the same way.

In the Four-Pass Check, the sense pass has always asked whether the sentence says what it means. So far you used it to catch sound-alike words (S17, S26). This section widens it: every slip you find, from any pass, gets one more question - does it change what the reader will understand? That question turns a list of errors into an order of work, which the next section uses for proofreading your own writing.

Here is the case that takes judgement: a slip that changes the meaning in one context and not in another. Mr Evans read out the student's names at assembly. Is the apostrophe wrong? Read strictly, student's means one student, and names means that student has several names. That is possible - a student with a first name, a middle name and a family name - but it is not what an assembly announcement usually does. If the notice is about the class toppers, the writer surely meant many students: the students' names. The slip changes the meaning, and it is the first thing to fix. But suppose the sentence is part of a story about one new student whose names are hard to say. Then student's names may be exactly right. So the check is not 'is the apostrophe before or after the s?' It is 'what does this version say, and does the context show the writer meant something else?' Where the context does not decide, a fair item does not key the apostrophe at all. Where it does, the slip that changes the meaning is keyed - and ranked above any slip the reader can see through.

Some of the most costly slips in history have been a single mark or a single word. Printers and publishers have long told stories about Bibles printed with one small word left out, turning a commandment into its opposite. Businesses tell stories about contracts where a misplaced comma changed who was owed what. The details of such stories are often retold and changed, so it is safer to treat them as warnings than as facts. What is certain is the pattern behind them. The slips that cause the most trouble are rarely the ones that look worst on the page. They are the quiet ones - a dropped not, a moved comma, a zero too many - that read smoothly and say something else. That is why careful readers of contracts, prescriptions and exam instructions read slowly, and why the sense pass comes before the send button.

Items key a meaning change only where the context shows what the writer meant: a sorry that shows 'can't' was meant, a notice about a whole class, a recipe that clearly needs grams. Pairs where both versions are correct and mean different things (Only I ate one / I ate only one; with or without commas around a relative clause) are asked as 'what does this version say?', never keyed as errors on their own. 'I only ate one' is standard in speech (ch06 S17). All people, shops and stories in items are invented.

1. For every slip you find, ask: would the reader understand something else?
2. Fix meaning changes first: a missing not, a wrong number, date or unit, a moved apostrophe, a missing comma or hyphen that changes who does what.
3. Check every number against what it should be: fees, dates, times, weights.
4. Read short messages word by word, especially can, can't, will and won't.
5. Watch for real words typed for other real words: form and from, untied and united, defiantly and definitely.
6. Read the sentence as it stands, not as you meant it.
7. Leave correct versions alone even when they mean something different from what you expected.

• Aarav called out from the kitchen, 'Let's eat Grandma!'
• The stray dog at Meera's gate wagged it's tail.
• Rohan's poster for the aquarium said: See a man eating shark!
• Mr Evans read out the student's names at the prize assembly.
• Ethan meant that nobody else had eaten, but wrote: I only ate one samosa.
• The recipe Amara sent from Accra said: add 2 kg of salt to the soup.

• Aarav called out from the kitchen, 'Let's eat, Grandma!'
• Kavya's reply to the thank-you note said: Your welcome.
• Reena's text to the coach said: I can come on Saturday, sorry.
• Walking into the kitchen, the smell of toast greeted Jack.
• Olivia bought twenty five-cent stamps at the post office.
• Kenji's reply to the invitation said: I will defiantly be there.

Proofreading your own writing

Proofreading your own writing is the Four-Pass Check, done slowly and in separate passes, with a few extra ways to make your own words look new.

A spellchecker is a useful first step, but it passes any real word, even in the wrong place: there for their, loose for lose, form for from, defiantly for definitely. Only the sense pass catches those.

Some habits make proofreading faster and surer.

Rank what you find as S28 taught: meaning first, then grammar, then marks. And keep the choices: a sentence that starts with And, a missing serial comma, a contraction in a friendly email - these are not slips (see S25, and ch16, ch21 and ch22). A proofreader who changes them makes the draft no better and teaches false rules.

Think of walking through your own home in the dark. You never trip, because your feet know where everything is - until someone moves a chair. Reading your own writing is the same: your mind knows the way and steps over the slips without seeing them. Proofreading is switching on the light and walking the room one wall at a time, looking at the floor instead of where you are going.

Until now, every sentence you checked was someone else's, built to hide one slip. Your own writing is different in two ways: it may hold several slips or none, and you already know what it means. So the Four-Pass Check stays the same, but it is slowed down into separate passes, and a few tricks make your own words look unfamiliar enough for the check to work.

Here is the case that takes judgement: how much time to give the proofread. Divya has finished a two-page application essay at 11 pm. It is due at 9 am. The options: submit now, proofread now, or sleep and proofread in the morning. Proofreading now is better than nothing, but Divya has just spent two hours with these words. Every sentence is in memory, and the eye will read the memory, not the page. Proofreading in the morning, after rest, gives a much stranger reader: the words have faded enough to be seen. But it risks a rushed morning. A sensible plan does both, lightly and then fully. Tonight: one quick pass for names, dates and numbers - the slips that do the most harm - and save. Tomorrow: the full routine - aloud, last sentence first, one pass per kind, the slip list. And if there is no morning - an exam answer, a form to hand in now? Then change the view as much as you can in the time: read the last sentence first, run the verb pass alone, and check every number. The lesson is not 'always wait'. It is: plan the proofread as part of the writing, and give the most time to the slips that do the most harm.

Most people find it much harder to spot a mistake in their own writing than in someone else's - and it is not because they are careless. When we read, the mind does not take in every letter. It predicts what comes next from what it already knows and checks the page lightly against the prediction. That is how we read quickly. With a stranger's text, the prediction is often wrong, so the mind looks closely. With your own, the prediction is almost always right - you wrote it - so the mind barely looks. The slip slips through. This is why professional writers and editors hand work to someone else, and why every trick in this section - reading aloud, reading backwards, printing the page - works by making your prediction weaker.

The steps here are habits, not rules; any routine that changes the view and looks for one kind of slip at a time will work. Items key only rules owned by earlier chapters, keyed as those chapters key them; a sentence starting with And, a missing serial comma, a contraction or a friendly register are never proofreading errors. The surprise example describes reading in general terms and cites no study or statistic. All people and drafts are invented.

1. Run the spellchecker first, then stop trusting it.
2. Rest before proofreading anything long, even for an hour.
3. Change the view: print it, enlarge it, or read it on another screen.
4. Read aloud, slowly, with a finger or the cursor under each word.
5. Read the last sentence first, then the one before it.
6. Make one pass per kind of slip: verbs, matching words, marks, sense.
7. Check every name, date and number on its own.
8. Keep a list of your own common slips and search for each one.
9. Fix meaning first, and leave the choices alone.

• Riya's essay: Their are three temples on the hill behind our school.
• Arjun's report: The results of the survey shows that most students walk to school.
• Sana's letter: The meeting is on 31 June at the town hall.
• Ben's story: We reached the beach and the waves are huge.
• Chloe's email: I've attached the form, and I'll send the photo tomorrow.
• Mateo's poster: Come to the science fair on friday at the main hall.

• Dev's application: I am writing to apply for the trainee post, and I have enclosed my CV.
• Pooja's diary: Yesterday we go to the market with Nani.
• Kunal's speech notes: Each of the prefects have a duty on sports day.
• Lucy's reply: Your right about the date of the match.
• Tom's essay: The book was long I finished it in two days.
• Nadia's poster: The book fair runs from 10 am to 4 am on Saturday.

Edit for a real reader

The Four-Pass Check is the editor's routine for the whole piece: one pass at a time, then decide for each line - fix, or keep.

Eight fixes, each in one pass, each with a chapter behind it. And four kinds of line that stay exactly as the writer wrote them.

Every decision falls into one of three kinds. Knowing which kind you are making is what lets you give a reason.

The last row needs the most care. A classmate may say that And cannot start a sentence, that a list needs a comma before and, or that class must take has. None of these is a rule of standard English. Changing them makes the piece no better and makes the writer doubt choices that were right.

When a choice is a matter of taste - a word you would have chosen differently - an editor sends a short query instead of a change: 'Would you like to keep "intense", or is there a sharper word?' The writer decides.

Think of a mechanic checking a car before a long drive. The mechanic runs through a fixed list - brakes, tyres, lights, oil - one system at a time. Some parts are worn and must be replaced. Others are an unusual colour or an older model but work perfectly; the mechanic leaves them alone. The owner gets back a car that is safe, still their own, and a list saying what was changed and why.

Professional editors usually return a piece with two things: the changes, each with a short reason, and queries for anything that is a choice rather than an error. A reason names the rule and the chapter that owns it - 'agreement: each is singular (ch12)'. A query is a polite question: 'Would you like a comma after "the guide"? Both are standard.' Reasons show that every change is needed; queries leave the writer's choices with the writer.

Here is the decision that takes judgement: the cut-off because-clause. 'Each of the pillars make a different note. Because the pillars are old. The guide asked us not to tap them.' The middle line is a fragment: a because-clause with no main clause of its own. The note asks for standard written English, so it must join a sentence. But which one? Join it backwards: 'Each of the pillars makes a different note because the pillars are old.' That is grammatical, and it is false - the pillars do not ring because they are old. The join creates a meaning error, worse than the fragment. Join it forwards: 'Because the pillars are old, the guide asked us not to tap them.' That is grammatical and true: age is the reason for the request. This is the fix. Now compare a short line that is not an error: 'And we did.' It starts with And and is short, but it has its own subject and verb, and it answers the line before it. Short is not the same as incomplete. The lesson: when a fix joins two pieces, read the result for sense. The marks pass finds the fragment; the sense pass decides where it belongs.

Many editors say that the hardest part of their job is not finding errors. It is leaving things alone. A fresh reader notices everything unusual in a text - a sentence that starts with And, a list without a final comma, a collective noun with a plural verb - and the urge to 'tidy' it is strong. But each of those is a choice that many careful writers make. That is why a good edit is often lighter than a new editor expects. A page returned covered in red may look thorough; a page with eight clear fixes and three polite queries is usually more useful, and the writer learns more from it. The mark of a good editor is not how much they change. It is that every change has a reason, and every line they leave has one too.

Items here key only errors that break a rule an earlier chapter owns, keyed as that chapter keys them; the editor's note names standard written English, which is why the splice and the cut-off because-clause are keyed. And at the start (ch21 S18), no serial comma (ch16 S11), a comma before a short and-clause (ch16), a collective noun with a plural verb (ch12 S17) and a short complete sentence are standard and never keyed as errors. Where more than one fix works (a full stop, a semicolon or and for the splice), items accept each. Hampi, the Stone Chariot and Matanga Hill are real places used as a setting; all people and events are invented.

1. Read the editor's note first: who is reading, and which standard applies.
2. Run the verb pass on every sentence: true subject, then verb.
3. Run the match pass: openers, lists, pronouns, articles and prepositions.
4. Run the marks pass: joints between sentences, capitals, end marks, apostrophes.
5. Run the sense pass: confusables, and what each sentence actually says.
6. When a fix joins two pieces, read the result for sense.
7. Keep standard choices: And at the start, the serial comma or its absence, the team has or have.
8. Give a reason for every change, rank fixes by harm, and query anything that is taste.

• Our Class 9 trip to Hampi was the best trip of the year.
• We left Bengaluru at dawn; the bus was already full of songs.
• Walking through the ruins, we felt the heat.
• Mr Collins, our visiting teacher from Leeds, gave us some good advice: drink water often and cover your head.
• And we did.
• Yuki, our exchange student from Osaka, saw the Stone Chariot, climbed Matanga Hill and took photos of the river.

• The guide explained the principle behind the temple's musical pillars.
• Each of the pillars makes a different note.
• Because the pillars are old, the guide asked us not to tap them.
• Our teachers, the guide and the bus driver made the trip easy for everyone, and we thank them.
• The whole class have signed a card to say so.
• Yuki's photos of the river are on the notice board.

Thinking like a writer · ages 16–19

What counts as an error?

The Four-Pass Check finds a form that looks wrong. This section asks what makes it wrong: which standard, which rule, and what kind of slip.

In everyday talk, and in this chapter's items, error means any form that breaks the named standard. Corder's distinction matters for what you do next: a mistake needs proofreading, an error needs teaching.

Two views of grammar sit behind every argument about errors. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions.

A careful editor uses both. The descriptive view stops you calling a dialect ignorant. The prescriptive view tells you what an exam answer needs. Trouble starts only when a prescriptive statement forgets its standard (we was is wrong) or a descriptive one forgets its reader (anything goes in an exam).

This is why every stem in this chapter names its standard when a standard matters: in standard written English, in an exam answer, in formal English. A stem that names none leaves the item unfair, and S37 returns to that.

Picture a set of rulers laid side by side. One is marked exam English, one Indian English, one a Yorkshire dialect, one casual texting. Every sentence can be measured, but only against one ruler at a time. A mark is an error only when it falls short on the ruler the task has handed you. Measuring a farmer's dialogue with the exam ruler, or an exam answer with the texting ruler, gives a wrong reading, not a wrong sentence.

This section extends Practice S11, where error and choice were first separated, and Craft S29, where proofreading was taught as a hunt for your own slips. It adds Corder's distinction between errors and mistakes, and the idea that a form is judged only against a named standard. S32 applies the test to rules that are not rules at all; S33 applies it to Indian English; S36 applies it to slips that come from a first language.

Here is the hard case: one form, three readers, three honest judgements. A Class 12 student, Ishaan, writes a short story for the school magazine. The narrator is an old boatman on the Hooghly, and Ishaan gives the boatman a line in English: We was never afraid of the river. The same week, Ishaan writes an exam answer that says: We was asked to compare two poems. The magazine editor reads the story and keeps we was. It is dialogue, it belongs to a character, and the non-standard form gives the boatman a voice. Changing it would be a correction against the story's own purpose. The examiner reads the answer and marks we was. The task is an exam answer in standard written English, and in that standard the past of be with we is were (ch12 S28). A linguist reads both and notes a further question: is the exam slip an error or a mistake? If Ishaan writes we were in every other answer, it is a mistake, perhaps carried over from writing the story that week. If Ishaan writes we was in every answer, it is an error, and the agreement rule needs teaching. All three readers are right. The form did not change. The standard and the purpose did. That is the Master's view of error: a judgement always has three parts, the form, the standard it is measured against, and the task the writer was doing. Leave out any one and the judgement is incomplete.

In 1967 the linguist S. Pit Corder published a short paper, The Significance of Learner's Errors, that changed how many teachers read red ink. He argued that a learner's errors are not only faults to be removed but evidence: they show the rules the learner is building. A child who says goed has not failed to learn went; the child has learnt that past forms add -ed, and applied the rule too widely. The error is a sign of progress, not of carelessness.

Corder's error and mistake are stated here only at the level of his 1967 distinction; later researchers refined and argued over it, and this section does not report those debates. In everyday talk and in this chapter's items, error means any form that breaks the named standard, whether it is a gap or a slip. Dialect examples are described in broad terms, not as the grammar of any one region. The names and sentences are invented.

1. Before marking any form, name the standard the task sets: exam English, formal English, a story's dialogue.
2. Name the rule the form breaks, and the chapter that owns it.
3. Ask rule or choice. If two standard forms exist, leave the one the writer chose.
4. Ask slip or gap. A slip needs proofreading; a gap needs the rule taught.
5. Describe a dialect form as grammatical in its dialect and non-standard in the named standard.
6. Write corrections as the exam standard is..., never as that is bad English.

• Rohan's answer sheet says: My sister have joined a law college in Pune.
• Meera's essay, every week: Yesterday I have submitted the form.
• In Kochi, the debate team have booked the hall for Friday.
• In a story set in a Northern English village, the old farmer says: We was only children then.
• Oliver's essay ends: This is the result we had hoped for.
• In Nairobi, Wanjiru's report reads: Each of the three pumps need a new filter.

• Tanvi's application form reads: I has attached my marksheet.
• Dev's notice says: Everyone must bring their own lunch on Saturday.
• Aisha's answer begins: The childrens were happy to see the elephants.
• In the play, the ferryman shrugs: It don't matter now.
• Grace's email to a tutor asks: Can I submit the essay on Monday?
• In Lima, Mateo's essay reads: The informations in the guide were useful.

Rules that are not rules

The Four-Pass Check marks a rule broken. A myth is a form that looks as if it breaks a rule and does not. Here are the ones most often circled.

A myth rarely travels alone. Items built to test judgement often put a myth beside a real error, so that the reader who marks the myth misses the slip.

In each sentence the myth is the most noticeable feature, and the real error is a small word further along. That is why the check runs in a fixed order: the verb pass first, then the match pass, then marks and sense. A myth never stops the check.

Some forms sit near the myths but are real rules: between you and I (me after a preposition, ch04), its for it's, a plural verb after a singular subject. Knowing the myths makes these easier to see, not harder.

Picture a security guard at a gate, told to stop anyone who looks suspicious. The guard stops a man in a raincoat, a woman carrying a long box and a boy with a hood, all of whom have passes. Meanwhile the one person without a pass walks through in an ordinary shirt. Usage myths are the raincoats: noticeable, harmless, and a drain on attention. The real error is the plain shirt.

This section extends S31, where every judgement named its standard, and Practice S11, where error and choice were first separated. It gathers into one table the myths that earlier chapters settled one by one: ch06 S29, ch07 S21, ch10 S24, ch12, ch14 S13, ch16 S11 and ch21 S18. S33 applies the same care to Indian English, and S37 uses the list to judge whether an item is fair.

Here is the hard case: a myth and a house rule in the same item. A school's magazine style sheet says: always use the serial comma. A student, Sameer, submits a piece that includes: We visited Agra, Jaipur and Udaipur. The magazine editor adds a comma after Jaipur. Sameer asks whether the original was wrong. The honest answer has two parts. First, the original was standard English. Many publishers, in India and elsewhere, leave out the comma before and in a simple list, and many others put it in (ch16 S11). Neither is an error. Second, the magazine has chosen one form, and within the magazine that choice is binding. The editor was right to add the comma, and would be wrong to tell Sameer that the original broke a rule of English. Now the same sentence appears in a general error-spotting item with no style named: (A) We visited / (B) Agra, Jaipur / (C) and Udaipur / (D) last winter. / (E) No error. The key must be E. Without a named house style, the missing serial comma is a choice, and an item that keys it has invented a rule. The Master's move is to hold both judgements at once: the form is standard, and the house may still require the other form. Say which is which, and neither the editor nor Sameer is misled.

The idea that an English sentence should not end with a preposition is often traced to the seventeenth-century poet John Dryden, who criticised the habit in other writers. Yet the pattern is old and native to English: Which drawer is it in?, What are you waiting for?, Where do you come from? Recasting them to avoid the final word produces In which drawer is it?, which is grammatical and sounds formal, or For what are you waiting?, which few speakers would say at all.

The history of each myth is given only in broad terms, and the Dryden example is described, not quoted. Some teachers and publishers keep house rules that match these myths; following a house rule is sensible, and this section only asks that it be called a house rule. Whom remains standard and is expected in some formal writing; the myth is that who is wrong everywhere. The names and sentences are invented.

1. Learn the seven myths and their home sections, so that you recognise them at a glance.
2. Never key a myth as an error in an item that names no house style.
3. Where a stem or a style sheet names a house rule, follow it and call it the house rule.
4. Never let a myth end the check: finish the verb pass and the match pass every time.
5. Do not stretch the list: between you and I, its for it's and a broken agreement are real rules.
6. In your own writing, use the myth forms freely where they read naturally.

• Ananya's speech begins: We want to really listen to every student.
• Vikram's report ends: This is the club we all belong to.
• Nandini's story goes on: And then the lights went out across Jaipur.
• Harriet's kit list: We packed tents, stoves and maps.
• Tom's message asks: Who should we invite to the launch?
• In Seoul, Min-jun's lab note reads: The data is ready for review.

• The Pune office says every applicant must upload their photo by Friday.
• Rahul and Sneha was chosen to speak at the assembly.
• The committee's findings, which were published in March, is clear.
• Over the summer we visited Bath, Bristol, and Cardiff.
• Emily's note says: The results were different than we expected.
• In Cairo, Yasmin's slide reads: The museum and it's garden open at nine.

Indian English: standard or exam non-standard?

The match pass checks every word against its partner. This section adds a question before the check: which standard is this text written in, and which one does the task name?

These patterns are common in speech across India and in many other places. Exam English writes them differently, and an item may key them under a stem that names exam or formal English.

The explanation for each is the same shape: exam English uses..., followed by the form. Never: Indians wrongly say. A pattern shared by millions of speakers is a pattern, and naming it plainly is more useful than any judgement of the people who use it.

Picture two maps of the same city. The local map shows the lanes by their everyday names: the timepass corner, the office people revert from. The exam map is the official one, drawn to a single national standard. Both maps are accurate. A traveller who uses the local map to fill in an official form will write some names the form does not accept; a traveller who calls the local map wrong has never walked the lanes.

This section extends S31, where every form was judged against a named standard, and S32, where standard forms that look odd were left alone. It gathers Indian English from ch20 S33 (Respected Sir, kindly) and ch22 S32 (Indian English in letters), and the exam patterns from ch07 S36, ch12 and ch13 S34. S36 goes further back, to the first-language patterns that explain some of these forms.

Here is the hard case: a standard word, a correct text, and a reader who may still be misled. An engineer in Pune, Ms Kulkarni, emails a supplier in Manchester: The inspection has been preponed to the 12th. Kindly revert with your availability. Every word is standard Indian English, and within India the email is clear, polite and correct. An error-spotting item that keyed preponed or revert would be unfair. But the reader is in Manchester. Prepone may be unfamiliar there, and revert, in British business English, usually means go back to an earlier state, as in The settings will revert to default. The supplier might read Kindly revert as a request to undo something. Is that an error? No. It is a question of audience, the subject of ch22. The email is correct in its variety; the reader belongs to another. A careful writer who knows the reader will choose the words that reader shares: The inspection has been moved forward to the 12th. Please reply with your availability. Notice what did not happen. Nobody called prepone wrong. The writer did not abandon Indian English; the writer chose, for one reader, the words both varieties share. That is exactly what a British writer should do when emailing Pune about a fortnight or a bank holiday. Varieties meet in the middle, and the meeting is courtesy, not correction.

Prepone was built in India on the model of postpone: if post- means after, pre- should mean before. The logic is sound, the word fills a real gap - English had no single verb for moving an event earlier - and several major dictionaries of English now record prepone, labelled Indian English. A word once circled in red by visiting editors turned out to be a small piece of good design. English has always grown this way: words coined in one variety travel to others when they fill a gap, and nobody now remembers that many everyday English words were once somebody's local invention.

The Indian English words here are described as standard in Indian English, the variety educated writers use across India; usage varies by region and setting, and a word such as timepass is informal in register as well. Home-chapter numbers point to where each rule is taught. Exam English here means the standard written English that objective items and exam answers measure; no board's marking scheme is described. The names and sentences are invented.

1. Treat prepone, revert, co-brother, timepass, out of station, Respected Sir and kindly as standard Indian English; never key them.
2. Key discuss about, cope up with, since two years, I am knowing, one of my friend and return back only under a stem that names exam or formal English.
3. Give the exam form beside every pattern: discuss the plan, cope with, for two years.
4. Tap the extra word - about, up, back - never the verb it follows.
5. Describe a pattern with exam English uses...; never describe speakers.
6. Writing to a reader abroad, choose words both varieties share. That is audience, not correction.

• The Chennai office notice says: The review has been preponed to Monday.
• Ms Sharma's email ends: Kindly revert by Friday.
• In an exam essay, Pranav wrote: We discussed about the new timetable.
• Visiting Hyderabad, Jack met Mr Rao's co-brother, who is married to Mrs Rao's sister.
• Olivia, working in Mumbai, texted a colleague: Sorry, I was out of station last week.
• In an exam essay from Osaka, Kenji wrote: I have lived here since two years.

• Watching the match all evening was pure timepass for Salma's cousins.
• In a formal letter, Harsh wrote: One of my friend has applied too.
• Respected Sir, I am writing to request two days' leave.
• Leo's exam answer: The team must cope up with the pressure.
• Hannah's exam answer: I am knowing the answer to this question.
• In a formal memo in Lagos, Amara wrote: Please return back the forms by noon.

Errors hiding in long sentences

The verb pass needs the true subject. In a long sentence, stripping finds it; then the Four-Pass Check runs on the core.

Along with, as well as and together with add a companion; they do not make the subject plural. The captain, along with the coach, was late is standard (ch12 S21).

Distance hides two more slips beside agreement.

Each slip is the same as in a short sentence. The only new skill is patience: keep the subject, the antecedent or the time in mind across the whole sentence, and check the far end against it.

After the core is checked, put the brackets back and check each extra on its own. A relative clause has its own subject and verb: in the students who travel by bus, travel agrees with students, not with the main subject.

Picture a washing line with one heavy shirt pegged at each end - the subject on the left, the verb on the right - and a row of socks, towels and scarves hanging between them. From a distance the line looks like a blur of washing. Unpeg everything in the middle, and the two shirts face each other across the empty line. Now you can see whether they match.

This section extends Practice S12, where the true subject was found in short sentences, and draws on ch12 S21 and S33 for agreement at a distance, ch14 S18 and S21 for antecedents, and ch13 for time. It adds the stripping routine. S35 applies the same routine one line at a time in a passage, and S37 uses it to judge whether an item's key is right.

Here is the hard case: two long sentences that look alike and take different verbs, both correctly. The first: The number of students from the three villages near Nashik who travel to the school by bus has doubled since the new road opened. The second: A number of students from the three villages near Nashik who travel to the school by bus have asked for a later bell. Strip both. The first core is The number ... has doubled. The number is a single figure, and it takes a singular verb. The second core is A number of students ... have asked. A number of means several, and the real subject is students, so the verb is plural (ch12). Now check the clause inside each: who travel. In both sentences, who refers to students, so travel is plural in both. The clause does not change with the main verb. A hurried reader who has learnt only strip to the first noun would get one sentence wrong. A reader who has learnt the number is singular and a number of is plural, and who also checks the clause on its own, gets both right. The lesson is that stripping finds the core; it does not replace knowing the rule for that core. Strip, then ask what the core really says. The number, a number of, one of, each of, none of: each has its own entry in ch12, and the long sentence is only the wrapping.

Experienced writers are not immune. Agreement at a distance is one of the slips most often found in published text, because writers revise sentences in pieces: a phrase is added in the middle of a sentence that was correct before, and the verb at the end is never reread. Editors often check long sentences by covering the middle with a finger, which is the stripping routine done by hand. The finger hides the phrases and clauses, the eye jumps from subject to verb, and a slip that survived three readings shows at once. It is a slow, humble method, and it works because it removes the one thing that hid the error: distance.

The number / a number of and similar entries are taught in ch12; this section only applies them at a distance. Collective nouns such as team, committee and staff may take singular or plural verbs (ch12 S17), and a long sentence with the team have is not keyed. The claim about published text is general, not a measured figure. The names and sentences are invented.

1. In any sentence over about fifteen words, bracket phrases, relative clauses and inserts before judging the verb.
2. Read the core aloud: subject, then verb. Check agreement there.
3. Remember that along with, as well as and together with do not make a subject plural.
4. Check each relative clause's own verb against its own subject.
5. For every pronoun, find its antecedent, however far back; if two could fit and the stem asks who is meant, say so.
6. Hold one time across the sentence unless it really changes. Never mark a long sentence wrong only for being long.

• The results of the survey that the students of Class 10 carried out last month shows a clear preference for morning classes.
• Although the monsoon arrived late in Kerala that year and the farmers waited anxiously for weeks, the rain finally comes in the second week of July.
• Every student who joined the science club in June, after the long vacation in Jaipur, must bring their own lab coat.
• The box of old photographs that Charlotte found in the attic of the farmhouse near York were full of letters.
• The new library, which the council built beside the river after years of argument about the cost, has opened their doors.
• In Nairobi, the guide who took Amina's group through the national park, pointing out lions, giraffes and a sleeping leopard, were patient with every question.

• One of the reasons that the school in Ranchi gave for closing early on Friday were the heavy rain.
• The bags that the volunteers in Guwahati packed for the flood relief camps were collected by noon.
• When Mrs Menon phoned Mrs Pillai about the wedding plans that the two families had discussed for weeks, she said the date had changed.
• The results of the trial, which the scientists in Leeds published after two years of work, suggests that the drug is safe.
• Having finished the long report on the city's water supply late on Friday, the office was locked by Daniel.
• In Lima, the price of the tickets for the concerts that the orchestra is giving this winter have risen.

Editing a passage line by line

The Four-Pass Check runs on each line in turn. The answer takes the task's shape: the wrong word, a dash, the fix.

Three habits make line-by-line editing reliable.

An omission task is the mirror image: one word is missing from each line, and the answer is the word and where it goes. Meera wants to become engineer: an, before engineer. Missing words are usually small - articles, prepositions, helping verbs - so the match pass finds most of them.

When a line seems to have two errors, one of them is usually a choice: a line with The team have and a real slip keeps have and fixes the slip (ch12 S17). When a line seems to have none, check the break: the subject may be on the line above.

Picture a train of six carriages, each with one faulty light. A mechanic walks from carriage to carriage, fixes one bulb in each, and writes the carriage number and the part on a card. A second mechanic, meaning well, rebuilds the whole first carriage. By the end of the shift, the first card is complete and the second mechanic is still in carriage one. The task was the card.

This section extends Craft S27, where passage editing and omission were named among the exam formats, and S34, where long sentences were stripped to their cores. It applies both to a passage whose line breaks cut sentences in two. Each fix points back to its home chapter, as every section in this chapter does. S36 asks where some of these slips come from; S40 returns to a full passage, unscaffolded.

Here is the hard case: a line that seems to have two errors, and a line that seems to have none, in the same task. The task says: each line has one error; write the wrong word and the correct word. Line 3: The committee have announce that the new rule, which Line 4: the members discussed for weeks, take effect from Monday. Line 3 looks as if it has two errors: The committee have and have announce. But the committee have is standard (ch12 S17), a choice that must be left alone. The one error is announce: after have, the verb needs its past participle. Answer: announce - announced. Line 4 looks as if it has none. The members discussed is right, and take effect from Monday sounds natural; the ear even hears members take, which would agree. That is the trap. Strip across the break: the new rule, [which the members discussed for weeks], take effect. The core is the new rule ... take. Rule is singular, so the verb is takes. Answer: take - takes. Neither line could be judged alone. Line 3 needed the rule that a choice is never fixed; line 4 needed the subject that sat on the line above, with a whole relative clause between. This is S34's stripping routine applied across a line break, and it is the reason passage editing is harder than it looks: the task cuts sentences where the setter chooses, and the setter often chooses to cut between a subject and its verb. The Master's move is patient: when a line seems to have no error, look up before you look again. And if, after reading across every break, a line in a task that promises one error per line still has none, write what the check finds. A defended No error is better than an invented correction, and S37 returns to tasks that break their own promise.

Professional proofreaders mark one change per problem for the same reason exam tasks ask for one word per line. A proofreader who rewrites a sentence takes the writer's choices away and makes the correction hard to check. The standard marks that proofreaders use are built for small, single changes - a letter here, a word there - with the fix written in the margin beside the line. A writer can then accept or reject each mark in a second, and nothing the writer chose is lost along the way. Line-by-line editing tasks train exactly that habit, whether or not the student ever works with a manuscript.

Passage editing and omission are described generically, as tasks found in many school papers; no board, paper, year or marking scheme is described, and the passage is original. Some tasks allow No error for a line and say so; follow the instruction. Line 5's fix is given as uses, since the filter still works; used would also remove the error, and a task would accept the wrong word either way. The names and passages are invented.

1. Read the instruction first: one error per line, one missing word per line, or No error allowed.
2. Set the time from the first line, and hold it unless the passage really changes time.
3. Run the Four-Pass Check on each line, reading one line back and one line on.
4. Write only the wrong word and its fix, or the missing word and where it goes.
5. Never fix a choice: the team have, a final preposition or And at the start stay.
6. If a line seems to have no error in a task that says every line has one, reread across the break before deciding.

• Line 1: Last month, our school in Nagpur hold a science fair
• Line 2: for students of Classes 8 to 12. Each of the teams were
• Line 3: given a table in the main hall, and an judge visited every
• Line 2: On Saturday, Ellie and Sam was waiting at the lock near Oxford
• Omission, line 4: The narrowboat was built in 1920s by a family firm.
• Line 3: The night market in Hanoi opens at dusk and closes on midnight.

• Line 4: table. The judges were most interested on a model of
• Line 5: a water filter that use sand, charcoal and old bottles.
• Line 6: It won first prize and will go to the district fair on May.
• Omission, line 1: Every morning, baker in Bristol lights the oven at four.
• Line 2: The baker shapes forty loaves and sell most of them by nine.
• Line 6, in a task that allows No error: The pupils in Accra walked home together after the match.

Errors across languages

The Four-Pass Check finds the slip; this section asks where the slip came from. Five patterns explain a large share of the slips that exam items test.

Transfer runs in every direction, and first-language English speakers slip too. The table sets a transfer slip beside the slips that have other sources.

Emily, Tom and Sophie grew up speaking only English. Their slips are no less real, and no more shameful, than Kavin's or Mei's. Every writer's slips have a source; the transfer slips are simply the easiest to predict.

Picture two maps laid one on top of the other. The first is the map of your first language, drawn so early that you no longer see it. The second is the map of English. Where the two maps agree, you walk straight. Where they differ - a road English has and your language does not, like the word the - your feet follow the old map. An error is not a wrong turn made by chance; it is the old map showing through.

This section builds on S33, where Indian English words were separated from exam non-standard patterns, and on S31, where Corder's distinction between an error and a mistake was introduced. It reuses the owning chapters: articles (ch05), pronouns (ch04, ch14), since and for (ch07; ch13 S34) and the progressive with states (ch13 S37). S37 now turns from the writer to the item: whether a printed key is fair.

Here is the hard case: a slip that two patterns could explain, and a teacher who must choose the margin note. Ayesha Khan, a Class 12 student in Hyderabad whose home languages are Urdu and Telugu, writes: My uncle is doctor, and he is working in Dubai since two years. There are two slips in this line, and a fair exam item would never test both at once. But a teacher reading a student's own writing must deal with both. The first slip, is doctor, drops an article before a job noun. Urdu, one of the languages of that home, has no word that works exactly like a. The second, is working ... since two years, has two parts: the progressive where exam English wants the perfect, and since where exam English wants for. Both follow one pattern: in Urdu, as in Hindi, an ongoing situation with se can be said with a present form, where English needs has been working for. A careless margin note would say: grammar! A fair one names the patterns: A job noun needs a or an (ch05). For a length of time up to now, exam English uses has been working for two years (ch13 S34). Notice what the note does not say. It does not say Indians say this wrongly. It does not rest on a guess about the writer's languages; it names the pattern the sentence shows. And it does not soften the key: in an exam, both slips would cost marks, and the student deserves to know it. The pattern is the explanation. The standard is the key. The margin note gives both.

Transfer runs both ways. An English speaker learning Hindi meets a language where every noun has a gender, and where the gender shows up on adjectives and verbs. English has nothing like it for nouns, so the English speaker's Hindi is full of gender slips - the mirror image of the he and she mix-ups that Bengali speakers make in English. Neither learner is careless. Each is walking the old map, and each has the same cure: name the pattern, then check that one thing every time.

The language facts here are stated at a general level: Hindi, Tamil, Russian and Japanese have no articles that work like a and the; Bengali se and Hindi vah cover he and she; Tamil avar is a respectful third-person form used for anyone; Hindi se and French depuis cover since and for; Mandarin marks the plural on nouns much less than English does. A pattern makes a slip likely; it does not make it certain, and many speakers of these languages never make the slip. Corder's view is stated only at the level of his 1967 paper. All names and sentences are invented.

1. Run the Four-Pass Check first; find the slip before you ask where it came from.
2. Name the pattern the sentence shows, not the language you guess from a name.
3. Keep the key: a pattern explains a slip, it never turns it into exam English.
4. Never key a standard Indian English word such as prepone, revert or co-brother.
5. Write margin notes that name the rule and its chapter: a job noun needs a or an (ch05).
6. Keep a list of your own patterned slips, and run one extra pass for each.

• Kavin is best batsman in our team.
• Arpita wrote: My grandmother phoned, and he wants us home by six.
• We have lived in Nagpur since two years.
• Emily wrote: The box of old letters were found in the attic.
• Jack wrote to a Hindi tutor: I have been learning Hindi for two years.
• Mei wrote: I bought two book at the fair.

• Ravi wrote: I am knowing Mr Rao since childhood.
• Why you are late today, Arjun?
• My co-brother Suresh reverted by email within an hour.
• Sophie wrote: Me and Tom went to the fair.
• Tom wrote: Their going to the match tonight.
• Lucas, from Brazil, wrote: I have been in Pune for three weeks.

Is the item fair? Two errors or none

The Four-Pass Check finds the error in a sentence; here you run it on every part of an item, to check that only one part fails. Five faults make an item unfair.

Fairness cuts both ways. Here are three challenges a student might raise, and how to judge each one.

The last row matters most. The challenge was wrong - a final preposition is standard (ch07 S21) - and yet the item was still unfair. Judge the item by running the check on every part, never by the strength of the complaint.

Picture a referee's whistle with a single note. A fair item blows it once: one part, one fault, or silence for No error. An unfair item blows it twice, or blows it at a legal move, or blows it at a foul that happened across two players at once. Your job is to listen for the second whistle, and to notice when the whistle blew at a move the rules allow.

This section turns the chapter's rule - one item, one error, or none - from a rule for authors into a test for readers. It uses the both-standard list from S32 and Practice S19, the choose-the-part format from Craft S27, and the exam-English stems from S33 and S36. S38 now puts these judgements under time: when two choices both seem to fit, what must the stem name to separate them?

Here is the hard case: an item that looks unfair, is challenged well, and turns out to be fair. The item reads: (A) Neither the manager / (B) nor the clerks / (C) was told / (D) about the change. / (E) No error. The key is C. Diya Kapoor challenges it. With neither ... nor, Diya argues, the verb can follow the first subject, so was agrees with the manager and the sentence is correct. The key should be E. The group checks. In standard written English, when neither ... nor joins a singular and a plural subject, the verb agrees with the nearer one. The nearer one is the clerks, which is plural, so the verb is were. Some speakers do say was in casual speech, but the stem of this practice book names standard written English at the top of every page. Under that standard, C holds the only error. Is any other part wrong? Neither the manager is right. Nor the clerks is right: nor pairs with neither. About the change is right. One defensible error, one key. The item is fair. Now change one detail: suppose the book's stem said nothing about standard written English, and the item appeared in a quiz on everyday speech. Then was would be arguable, and the item would need the stem added to be fair. That is the Master's test. An item is not fair or unfair in the abstract; it is fair when its stem names the standard and exactly one part breaks that standard. Diya's challenge was careful and well argued. It was also wrong, and a fair judge says both.

Some of the most common unfair keys in practice material mark forms that were never errors: singular they after everyone, a sentence ending with a preposition, and the team have. Each of these rules appears in older textbooks and is repeated from book to book. A student who learns them from an unfair key has not learned a stricter English; they have learned a rule that careful writers do not follow, and they will spend years correcting sentences that were right.

The items in this section are invented to show each fault; none is taken from a real book, paper or board. Standard here means accepted in careful published writing today, as in the rest of the chapter. Neither ... nor agreement is described at the level of standard written English; casual speech varies. A particular book or teacher may keep a house rule, and a student following that house should keep it, but a house rule is not grammar. All names are invented.

1. Run the Four-Pass Check on every part of an item, not only the keyed one.
2. Call an item fair only when exactly one part breaks the named standard, or none does and No error is offered.
3. Check the key against the both-standard list before accepting it.
4. Check that the error sits wholly inside one part.
5. Check that the stem names the standard when the answer depends on it.
6. Repair with the smallest change: one word, one slash, one key, or three words in the stem.

• (A) Each of the students / (B) have finished / (C) there homework / (D) before lunch. Key: B
• (A) Everyone must bring / (B) their own lunch / (C) to the picnic. Key: B
• (A) By next June / (B) Sana will / (C) finished / (D) the course. Key: C
• Find the error: We had less visitors at the fete this year.
• (A) The team have / (B) won their / (C) matchs / (D) this season. Key: C
• (A) Neither the coach / (B) nor the players / (C) was told / (D) about the change. Key: C

• (A) Each of the students / (B) has finished / (C) their homework / (D) before lunch. / (E) No error
• (A) By next June / (B) Sana will finished / (C) the whole course. / (D) No error
• In formal written English, find the error: We had less visitors this year.
• (A) Everyone in the hostel / (B) have to switch off / (C) their lights / (D) by ten. Key: B
• (A) Who are / (B) you waiting / (C) for outside / (D) the hall? / (E) No error
• (A) The ferry to / (B) the islands / (C) leave at / (D) nine each day. / (E) No error

Error spotting under exam conditions

The Four-Pass Check does not change under time; only its speed does. Each generic format gets its own quick routine.

Careful items avoid the both-standard traps; careless ones fall into them. Under time, recognise each trap on sight, and never let it pull you away from a real error.

When two choices both seem to fit, ask: what would the stem need to name to separate them? If the answer is formal writing, and the stem names it, key the formal choice. If the stem names nothing, the choice that breaks a real rule is the key, and the choice that only breaks a preference is not.

Picture a customs officer at a busy airport with four lanes to check. The officer does not open every bag at random or stop the passenger with the biggest suitcase. The officer runs the same four checks on every bag, in the same order, faster when the queue is long, and waves through every bag that passes. A bag is stopped only for a rule it breaks, never for a label the officer happens to dislike.

This section puts the chapter's method under time. It uses the Four-Pass Check from Discover S8, the generic formats from Craft S27, the both-standard list from S32 and Practice S19, and the fairness test from S37: a careful item avoids the traps, so a trap part is almost never the key. S39 now turns from exam items to literature, where a deliberate non-standard form is read for what it does.

Here is the hard case: two corrected versions that both seem right, and forty seconds to choose. The item says: Choose the best version of the sentence. Its four choices are: A. There were less candidates than seats this year. B. There were fewer candidates than seats this year. C. There was fewer candidates than seats this year. D. There were fewer candidate than seats this year. C fails the verb pass: candidates is plural, so were. D fails the match pass: fewer takes a plural, candidates. That leaves A and B, and both sound natural. Now ask the question: what would the stem need to name to separate them? Less with a plural noun is common in casual speech, and formal written English uses fewer (ch05). So the stem would need to name formal writing. This stem says best version, and the item comes from a set whose instructions name formal written English. Under that standard, B is the key. Suppose the set named no standard at all. Then A and B would both be defensible, and the item would be unfair - the S37 fault of an unnamed standard. A careful student would still choose B, since fewer is correct in every standard and less is disputed in formal writing; but the item would not be testing grammar any more. Notice the reasoning. The student did not choose B because it sounded better, or because fewer is a longer word. The student found the one difference between A and B, asked what standard would decide it, and read the stem to find that standard. That is the whole method in forty seconds: find the difference, name the standard, then decide.

In a timed error test, the first twenty seconds on an item are usually spent on the verb pass, and that pass alone finds many errors. The subject far from its verb - The bundle of old newspapers lying near the gate belong to Mr Das - is a favourite shape in practice material, because it tests whether the reader can hold a subject in mind across a long phrase. A student who runs the verb pass carefully on every item often catches more errors than one who reads every part for a feeling.

Formats are described generically; no board, paper, year, marking scheme or timing is named or implied. The twenty items in fifteen minutes is an invented practice set. The claim that many errors sit on the verb describes this chapter's items and common practice material, not the statistics of any real test. Standard means accepted in careful published writing today. All names and sentences are invented.

1. Read the instruction before the sentence: a word, a letter, a version or a pair?
2. Run the verb pass first on every part; then match, marks and sense.
3. Cross out each part that passes; choose No error only when every part is crossed out, and then choose it.
4. Never choose a part because it is long, odd or hard.
5. Recognise the both-standard traps on sight and leave them alone.
6. When two choices both fit, name what would separate them and read the stem for it; a rule beats a preference.

• The bundle of old newspapers lying near the gate belong to Mr Das.
• (A) One of my / (B) friends are / (C) coming to / (D) the fair today. / (E) No error
• In exam English: Varun could not cope up with the heavy workload.
• (A) Which hostel / (B) are you / (C) going to? / (D) No error
• (A) The team have / (B) chosen / (C) a new captain. / (D) No error
• Passage editing, line 4: Last year our school win the inter-school quiz in Nairobi.

• Everyone in the hostel must switch off their lights by ten.
• In formal written English: There were less candidates than seats this year.
• Every one of the answer sheets were collected before the bell.
• But the bus never came, and we walked home.
• We bought pens, pencils, and a ruler for the exam.
• In Manila, Paolo checked that the parcel weighed less than 10 kg.

Close reading: when a "mistake" is deliberate

The Four-Pass Check still runs; a close reader simply adds one question after it: is this form a slip, or a choice the text makes on purpose?

Three questions separate a deliberate form from a slip.

When you write about a deliberate form, quote it exactly - never correct a quotation - and keep your own sentences standard. The poet's use of dialect shows the speaker's age is a sentence about a choice; The poet's use of dialect show the speaker's age is a slip of your own.

Picture a museum with two kinds of objects behind glass. Some are cracked by accident, and a restorer's label says damaged. Others were made cracked - a glaze that crazes on purpose, a pot shaped to look old - and the label says crackle glaze, made this way. A careless visitor calls both broken. A close reader reads the label: the text itself usually says which kind of crack it is.

This section brings the chapter's first test - is it a rule or a choice? - to its highest level. It extends S31, where dialect forms such as we was were shown to be grammatical in their dialect and non-standard in exam English, and S32, where some rules were shown to be myths. It anticipates S40, where a whole text mixes errors, choices and quoted speech, and points to ch26 Figures of Speech and ch28 Personal Style, where deliberate forms are studied as craft.

Here is the hard case: a student essay that quotes a deliberate form and then slips into it. Riya Menon, a Class 12 student in Thrissur, writes about an invented short story in which a grandmother speaks in her village's dialect. The essay says: The grandmother's words, We was always poor but we was never hungry, shows her pride. The writer don't correct her speech, because the dialect is who she is. There are three non-standard forms in this passage, and they need three different judgements. We was, inside the quotation marks, is the grandmother's voice. It is deliberate in the story, it is consistent, and the story marks it as speech. It stays exactly as printed. Shows is Riya Menon's own verb. Its subject is words, which is plural, so the verb must be show. There is no speaker here but the essayist, and the slip is the essayist's. Don't is also the essayist's own. The subject is the writer, singular, so standard English needs doesn't. Perhaps the essay has caught the grandmother's voice, but an essay about a dialect is still written in standard English. So the fair marking is: keep the quotation, fix shows to show, fix don't to doesn't. And the fair comment is one that separates them: Your quotation is exact and well chosen. Your own verbs must agree: the grandmother's words show; the writer doesn't. This is the whole chapter in one paragraph of an essay. The same form, we was or don't, can be a voice in one place and a slip in another. The key decides only for the writer's own formal prose, and the close reader knows where that prose begins and ends.

Shakespeare's plays use other double comparatives and superlatives too, and so does much writing of his period; the rule that more and -er cannot be combined was settled later, as English grammar books multiplied. Readers who meet most unkindest today often assume Shakespeare was careless. In fact the rule that would mark it is younger than the line - which means the line did not break the rule. The rule came afterwards. The same is true of many forms a modern key marks. A reader who meets them in an older text is looking at the English of its day, not at a slip, and the fair question is never is this wrong? but what did this mean, and what does it do, when it was written?

Julius Caesar is dated to 1599, its first recorded performance; the line This was the most unkindest cut of all is quoted in modern spelling from Act 3, Scene 2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is dated to its first publication, in 1884; its dialect is described rather than quoted, and Twain's opening note is paraphrased. The ferryman, the river poem, Riya Menon's essay and the grandmother's story are invented. How settled the rule against double comparatives was in any given decade is stated only in general terms.

1. Run the Four-Pass Check, then ask of any non-standard form: slip or choice?
2. Test a form with three questions: what does it do, is it consistent, does the text mark it?
3. Judge older English against its own time, not a modern key.
4. Quote exactly; never correct a quotation.
5. Write about a voice in standard English; never borrow its forms for your own sentences.
6. Treat a slip in a report, notice or answer as a slip, even when it is in print.

• The grandmother said, We was always poor but we was never hungry.
• In an essay: The grandmother's words shows her pride.
• A poem by a student in Shillong: Me and the river, we don't never rest.
• Antony: This was the most unkindest cut of all.
• In an exam answer: Huck Finn tell the story in his own dialect.
• A sailor in an invented novel set in Valparaiso: I ain't never seen a storm like it.

• In an essay: The grandmother's words show her pride.
• In an essay: The writer doesn't correct the grandmother's speech.
• A school notice in Kochi: The library remain closed on Sunday.
• In an essay: Antony calls it "the most unkindest cut of all".
• In an essay: Twain gives Huck a voice that no standard narrator could have.
• A market seller in an invented story set in Lagos: This one, it cost you nothing to look.

Independent performance

Here are six lines from Nandini Rao's draft, each put through the Four-Pass Check and Ms Clarke's brief.

Every decision is the Four-Pass Check and one question more: is this a rule broken, or a choice made?

The kinds of decision in the draft, with the smallest move for each.

When every line is fixed or defended, the article is correct. It may still not move well: most of its sentences are the same length and shape. That is not an error, and no key would mark it. It is the next chapter's work.

Picture an editor at a desk with three trays and a single pen. The first tray is for rules broken: the pen makes one small mark in each line. The second is for choices made: no mark, only a note saying why. The third is for voices quoted: no mark and no note, only quotation marks that the pen does not cross. At the end of the day, every line has gone into exactly one tray, and every tray can be explained.

This is the chapter's capstone. It draws on Discover S8 (the Four-Pass Check) and S9 (nothing wrong here), Practice S11 (error or choice) and S19 (No error), Craft S22 (comma splices), S26 (less and fewer) and S30 (edit for a real reader), and Master S33 (Indian English), S36 (patterns), S37 (fair items) and S39 (quoted voices). Chapter 24, Sentence Rhythm, begins where this ends: with a correct text whose sentences now need to move.

Here is the hard case, and it sits in the third paragraph of the draft. Nandini Rao writes: Mr Ansari has been a guide since twelve years, and his family has run the tea stall at the corner since 1990. The line holds two sinces, and they need two different decisions. The first comes before twelve years, a length of time. The brief names formal written English, and formal English uses for with a length of time (ch13 S34). So since becomes for: Mr Ansari has been a guide for twelve years. The second comes before 1990, a point in time. That is exactly what since is for, and it stays. Then there is his family has run. Some editors would stop here and wonder whether family has or family have is right. Both are standard (ch12 S17), and a singular verb after family is perfectly regular. It stays. So one line, three candidates, one fix. The margin note reads: since twelve years - for twelve years (a length of time takes for in formal English, ch13 S34); since 1990 kept (a point in time); his family has kept (both standard). Now notice two tempting over-fixes. The first changes both sinces to for, because since has become the word to distrust; but for 1990 is not English. The second rewrites the line as Mr Ansari, who has guided for twelve years, belongs to a family that has run the stall since 1990 - a new sentence, a new structure, and a defence nobody can check. And notice the tone of the note. It does not say that anyone speaks wrongly, or that the phrase is bad English. It names the standard the brief sets and the rule that standard follows. That is the whole chapter in one line: find it, fix it, keep what is chosen, and say why - without judging anyone.

The best single edit in the whole article removes one apostrophe. An old library in the lane has kept it's wooden shelves becomes has kept its wooden shelves. The apostrophe was telling the reader that the library has kept it is wooden shelves - nonsense that no reader would stop at, and exactly why spellcheckers and quick readers miss it. The sense pass, reading the contraction out in full, catches it in one second. A second surprise: the longest line in the draft, the shopkeeper's question, is the only one the editor must not touch.

Nandini Rao, Ms Clarke, Mr Ansari, Oliver Grant, Kenji Sato, the magazine, the library, the tea stall and the walk are invented. Hyderabad, Charminar and the old city are real places, but no real guide, shop or event is described. The brief is the section's own, not a real magazine's. Standard means accepted in careful published writing today. Quoted speech is kept as spoken because the brief says so; another brief could say otherwise, and a writer following it should keep it.

1. Read the brief first: which standard, and what happens to quoted speech?
2. Read the whole text once before changing anything.
3. Run the Four-Pass Check on every line: verb, match, marks, sense.
4. Put each candidate in one tray: a rule broken, a choice made, or a voice quoted.
5. Make the smallest change that fixes each fault: usually one word.
6. Defend every fix and every keep in one line that names the rule, the chapter or the choice.

• The heritage walk through the old city were led by Mr Ansari.
• We start at Charminar at seven and reached the palace by nine.
• Everyone in the group had brought their own water bottle.
• Oliver Grant, visiting from Leeds, had lived in Hyderabad since June.
• Ms Clarke asked which lane the tea stall was in.
• Kenji Sato, visiting from Osaka, took less photos than planned.

• Mr Ansari has been a guide since twelve years.
• An old library in the lane has kept it's wooden shelves for a century.
• The shopkeeper called out, "Tea is ready, you are coming or not?"
• It was a long walk, it was worth every step.
• And the old city surprised us all.
• Kenji Sato photographed the gate the group had read about.