Sentence Correction & Grammar Rules

Verbal tests assess standard written business English. The top error tested across Indian placement exams is Subject-Verb Agreement involving intervening prepositional phrases.

Exam Frequency: 3 to 6 questions in TCS, Wipro, and Banking

Essential Formulas & Shortcut Rules

Subject + [Prepositional phrase / as well as / along with] + Verb agrees with the PRIMARY subject

Ignore intervening clauses like "together with his teammates".

Neither... Nor / Either... Or: Verb agrees with the NEAREST subject

Proximity rule for correlative conjunctions.

Worked Step-by-Step Examples

Example 1: Find the grammatical error: "The committee have decided to submit its recommendations to the ministry by next Monday."

Step-by-Step Mathematical Derivation:

•Identify the subject: "The committee" is a collective noun acting as a single unit (evidenced by the singular possessive pronoun "its").

•A collective noun acting as a singular unit takes a singular verb: "has decided", not "have decided".

•Correct sentence: "The committee has decided to submit its recommendations to the ministry by next Monday."

Answer: Error in "have decided" (should be "has decided")

💡 Speed Shortcut: Look for pronoun consistency: if the sentence uses "its", the verb must be singular; if it uses "their", the collective noun is acting distributively.

Common Exam Traps to Avoid

✕Making the verb agree with the noun immediately preceding it instead of the true syntactic subject.
✕Using "between" for more than two entities (use "among").

Interactive Practice Drill (2 Questions)

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Sentence Correction & Grammar Rules Practice Drill

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1Sentence Correction & Grammar Rules

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Select the grammatically correct sentence from the options below:

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