Grammar and Punctuation Correction Questions
How do you correct punctuation and grammar in an assessment passage?
Locate where speech begins and ends first, since most of these questions involve dialogue, and speech has its own strict punctuation rules — commas instead of full stops before an attribution like "said Jane," and lower-case attribution verbs unless they start a new sentence. Use the frequency of a feature across the answer options as a guide: if most options share a comma, capital letter, or punctuation choice, it's likely correct.
Why speech punctuation is the recurring focus
Grammar questions are a regular feature of a reading comprehension section, and they consistently test the same small set of rules: where dialogue starts and stops, how it's attributed, and capitalisation around it. Getting comfortable with these specific rules covers most of what this question type asks.
Worked example
Choose the option that corrects: I knew something is off here said jane I knew I shouldve stayed home
The sentence contains two separate pieces of speech ("I knew something was off here" and "I knew I should've stayed home") separated by an attribution ("said Jane"). Any option missing one of the two speech-mark pairs can be eliminated immediately — a genuinely common way these questions are made harder is quietly dropping one side of the quotation.
Within speech, a full stop before an attribution becomes a comma: "...off here," not "...off here." "Said" stays lower case, since it continues the sentence rather than starting a new one — capitalising it after a comma is a frequent trap. Finally, "shouldve" needs its apostrophe: "should've."
The option satisfying all of these — both speech-mark pairs present, a comma (not a period) before "said," lower-case "said," and the correct contraction — is correct.
Using frequency as a check, not a substitute
If several options share a feature — say, four out of five begin with a capital letter, or four use a particular contraction — that's a genuine clue the correct answer shares it too, since assessments tend to build in only one or two variations per question. This is useful for narrowing options quickly, but it should confirm a decision already reasoned out, not replace reasoning entirely.
Steps
- Locate where speech begins and ends within the sentence
- Apply speech-specific rules: commas (not full stops) before attribution, lower-case attribution verbs mid-sentence
- Check contractions and homophones (its/it's, whether/weather) carefully
- Use features shared by most options as a supporting check, not a replacement for reasoning
This is one chapter of the Scholarship & Entrance English Assessment Guide. The complete guide — every technique, collected in one document — is available as a free PDF from the guide's main page.