Typical Errors on the SAT Proofreading Section
Parallel Structure Errors
- A talented athlete just like his older brother, Harold enjoys biking, skiing, and to play golf.
- Sharon is a great dancer but, despite years of diligent practice, poor at singing.
- The purpose of George Bernard Shaw's plays is more to instruct than providing entertainment.
- The short story contains not only comic elements but also it contains tragic elements.
In the second example, the related concepts are Sharon's dancing and singing and should take the same grammatical form, so either of the following versions is acceptable:
- Sharon is a great dancer but, despite years of diligent practice, a poor singer.
Sharon is great at dancing but, despite years of diligent practice, is poor at singing.
In the third example, the sentence lists two purposes of Shaw's playsinstructing and entertainingbut the two ideas are in different grammatical forms. The following would be an acceptable version of this sentence:
- The purpose of George Bernard Shaw's plays is more to instruct than to entertain.
The following expressions all require parallel forms of the phrases (the blanks) that they link:
- both . . . and
- either . . . or
- neither . . . nor
- whether . . . or
- not only . . . but also
- The short story contains not only comic elements but also tragic elements.
If this type of error tends to trip you up, you should also review the following categories:
- idiom errors
- comparison errors
More on: SATs and Other Tests
From The RocketReview Revolution: The Ultimate Guide to the New SAT and the PSAT by Adam Robinson. Copyright © 2005. Used by arrangement with Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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