Sentence Structure & Agreement: Verbs, Pronouns, and the Art of Matching

The five questions you'll see, over and over

Despite the variety of sentences, this category recycles five core ideas:

1. Subject-verb agreement. Singular subject, singular verb.
2. Pronoun agreement and clarity. Every pronoun needs a clear, matching antecedent.
3. Verb tense and form. Tenses must stay consistent unless the sentence signals a change.
4. Modifier placement. A modifier should sit next to what it's modifying.
5. Parallelism. Items in a list should share the same grammatical shape.

Master those five and you've handled almost every Form, Structure, and Sense question on the SAT.

1. Subject-verb agreement: find the real subject

The SAT loves to plant fake subjects between you and the verb. Strategy:

• Cross out everything between commas. Parenthetical phrases never contain the real subject.
• Cross out prepositional phrases. "One of the boxes" sounds plural, but the subject is "one", not "boxes."
• Watch for collective nouns. Team, committee, jury, family: usually singular on the SAT.
• Watch for "either...or" and "neither...nor". The verb agrees with the closer subject.

Wrong: "The list of demands were rejected." Subject is "list" (singular). Right: "was rejected."

2. Pronouns: who exactly are we talking about?

Two checks for every pronoun:

1. Number match. A singular antecedent gets it or he/she/they; a plural gets they. The traps almost always involve collective nouns or "everyone/anyone/each", which take singular pronouns in formal SAT English.
2. Clarity. If a sentence mentions two people and then says "she", and either could be "she", that's an ambiguity error. The SAT will sometimes prefer rewording over the pronoun.

Common confusions:

• Its (possessive) vs. it's (it is).
• Their (possessive) vs. there (location) vs. they're (they are).
• Who (subject) vs. whom (object). On the SAT, "whom" is rare; trust your ear unless the structure is highly formal.
• That (essential) vs. which (non-essential). "Which" is almost always preceded by a comma.

3. Verb tense: stay consistent unless told otherwise

Within a sentence and paragraph, verb tenses should match unless a time signal tells you to switch. "Yesterday, by the time we arrived, the show had started." "Had started" is past perfect because it happened before another past event.

The most common SAT tense mix-up: simple past versus present perfect. "I lived in Madrid for three years" (then it ended) vs. "I have lived in Madrid for three years" (and still do). The sentence's other clues (a date? "since"? "for"? a current state?) tell you which.

4. Modifiers: stand next to what you describe

A modifying phrase at the start of a sentence must describe the noun it sits next to.

Wrong: "Walking to school, the rain soaked my jacket." (The rain wasn't walking.)
Right: "Walking to school, I got soaked by the rain."

The fix is almost always: change the subject of the second clause so the opening modifier describes it correctly.

5. Parallelism: match the shape

Items in a list, on either side of and, or, or in a comparison, should share grammatical form.

Wrong: "She likes hiking, swimming, and to bike."
Right: "She likes hiking, swimming, and biking."

Comparisons are sneakier. "Her writing is sharper than her brother." Are we comparing her writing to her brother (the human)? No, to his writing. So: "Her writing is sharper than her brother's."

A worked example pulling it together

"Among the new exhibits, including a working steam engine and a life-sized model of a pterodactyl, the museum's curator says ____ her favorite."

Choices: "the engine is", "is the engine", "the engine being", "are the engines".

The verb's subject is "the engine" (singular). The verb needs to be a finite present-tense verb. "Being" is a participle, not a finite verb. "Are the engines" disagrees with the singular subject and the singular "her favorite". Of the legal options, "the engine is" works best.

How to practice this efficiently

1. For every miss, name the rule in three words: "subject-verb mismatch", "dangling modifier", "parallel form". You'll spot patterns within ten questions.
2. When all four answers seem fine, the question is testing something subtle. Look for the buried subject or a comparison that's not parallel.
3. Read the whole final sentence with your chosen answer. About 1 in 5 traps reveals itself only when you read past the underline.