Do you ever miss SAT or ACT punctuation questions on topics you could’ve sworn you’d mastered? Turns out that this is a common experience. And fortunately, there’s a solution within your reach.
When I’m teaching punctuation to one of my one-on-one standardized testing clients, we review every possible scenario and every type of punctuation, from the colon to the parenthesis. And there are two subtopics that seem to cause the most trouble.
When it comes to these two items, a student will often answer correctly when we do a practice set focused on just that question type. However, when the student actually encounters a similar Q in the wild, among a bunch of other questions—e.g., on a practice test—they tend to get it wrong. This is because they struggle to figure out which punctuation concept the question is testing them on to begin with!
That’s what we’re going to clear up today. If you can learn to identify and distinguish just these two topics—which can be done simply by learning to recognize how the answer choices are formatted!—then you’ll grab extra points on the English/Reading & Writing sections every time.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
B. Key topic 1: Joining two clauses correctly
C. Key topic 2: Adding extra information to a sentence
D. Where most students go wrong
E. How to make sure YOU don’t make that mistake
1) Correctly identifying questions about joining clauses
2) Correctly identifying questions about adding extra information
F. Examples
1) ACT
2) SAT
G. Conclusion
Watch this article as a video:
Key Punctuation Topic 1: Joining two clauses correctly
The first big-bang-for-your-buck punctuation topic on the ACT's English section or on the Digital SAT's Reading and Writing section is the question of how to join two complete clauses together.
There are only five grammatically correct ways to do so. Below, “C” refers to “Complete clauses,” aka independent clauses:
1. C. C.
2. C; c.
3. C, coordinating/FANBOYS conjunction* c.
4. C: c.**
5. C—c.**
* FANBOYS conjunctions are: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, & so.
** In these two cases, the second complete clause must explain, clarify, or answer the question posed in the previous complete clause.
Key Punctuation Topic 2: Adding Extra Information
The next major punctuation question category that you’ll commonly see on both tests concerns adding extra information to a sentence.
When you have a sentence and you want to put extra information in the middle or end of it, you have three choices. These are the only three ways you can do so in a way that’s grammatically correct, according to the ACT and SAT:
1) Use commas: Sent, extra information, ence. Or Sentence, extra information.(That's the one you’ll see the most often.)
2) Use dashes: Sent—extra information—ence. Or Sentence—extra information.
3) Use parentheses: Sent (extra information) ence. Or Sentence (extra information).
The most common punctuation mistakes on the SAT and ACT
I find that about 90% of the punctuation questions on the SAT or ACT test your knowledge about one or the other of those topics we just reviewed: how you put two complete clauses together correctly, or how you correctly add extra information into a sentence.
Here’s the issue that I see among many of my students (before I set them straight, that is!).
When they’re working through a practice test problem, I’ll ask them which underlying punctuation topic the problem is testing them on. And THIS is where the student goes astray. They might say, “Oh, it's about extra information,” when it’s actually about putting two clauses together. They should be analyzing A) whether the clauses are complete or not, and then B) based on what they are, determining how to then use punctuation to correctly put them together.
Or conversely, maybe they think the whole question is focused on joining clauses, but it is, in fact, focused on how to insert extra information into the sentence. The latter entails determining A) if a word or phrase is in fact extra/non-essential, and then, B) given that, how do you punctuate it correctly?
As you can see, these two question types entail totally different processes and totally different objectives. If you're off trying to analyze clauses when you should be analyzing extra information in the sentence (or vice versa), you're going to get the question wrong.
Fortunately, I’ve figured out a really useful guideline to help you identify which of the two main punctuation tasks the ACT or SAT grammar question is inquiring about…so you do not lose the scent trail to the correct answer.
SAT and ACT: How to answer punctuation questions correctly
I’ve determined that you can get to the bottom of which of these two topics you’re dealing with by looking at the answer choices.
1) Strategy for identifying questions that are asking about clauses
On the one hand, you may encounter a question where all of this is true:
a) The words in the answer choices are basically exactly the same—besides maybe a single FANBOY word, like “and,” that shows up in one answer and not the others.
b) There is a single spot where each answer choice differs in terms of what type of punctuation (or lack thereof) it contains.
c) Most importantly, the answer choices contain something OTHER THAN a comma. So maybe one answer choice includes a comma. One includes the word “but” (FANBOY alert!), but no punctuation. One includes a semicolon. One includes a period. These punctuation marks differ, but all fall in the same place in the sentence.
2) How to tell you're dealing with an "adding extra information" question
On the other hand, you’re almost certainly facing the other type of punctuation Q—and being tested on adding extra information—if:
A) The answer choices change two variables around instead of just one. So maybe after the word “alleged,” some of the answer options have punctuation, whereas some don't. BUT ALSO, after a different word elsewhere in the sentence (let’s say “butterfly”), some of the answer choices have punctuation, whereas some don't. So there are two different decisions about the sentence’s punctuation that you have to make in order to choose the right answer.
B) The only decisions you're making at each of the places involve commas. At each of the two decision points, you’re asking, “Should there be a comma here, or not?” There is no other type of punctuation. There are just commas or a lack thereof.
Examples: figuring out what kind of punctuation is being tested
Now I’m going to walk you through how to actually implement the method I’ve just described, using a few hypothetical examples. The cool thing is that we don’t even need to look at the passages themselves to use my identifying strategy—we can just analyze the answer choices according to the schema I laid out above!
ACT example
Here’s a sample question in the style of the ACT:
Which choice makes the sentence most grammatically acceptable?
A. No Change
B. artist and poet,
C. artist, and poet
D. artist and poet
Our first clue is that there are TWO different places where there's punctuation. One is after the word “artist,” and the other is after the word “poet.” So there's more than one decision point.
The second big clue is that the only punctuation in the answer choices is commas.
Ding, ding, ding! The Ivy Lounge Test Prep™ process tells us that this is an extra information question. So don't waste your time analyzing clauses. What you are instead going to do is determine whether the two words between the choice points—in this case, the words “and poet”—constitute extra information or not. That is your only task in this question.
SAT example
Here is another question, this one based on the SAT question format.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) yelled
B) yelled and
C) yelled:
D) yelled,
So let’s get our magnifying glass out and look at these answer choices closely. When we do, we notice that there's only one decision point. There's only one word in the answer choices, with the exception of a FANBOY (the word “and,” in answer choice B).
We also notice that one answer choice has a colon while the other has a comma.
What does that amount to? According to our method, these are telltale signs that a question is testing your ability to analyze clauses.
Now that that’s been settled, you actually know how to go about answering it. You’ll return to the passage, read the sentence up through the word “yelled,” and figure out whether it’s a complete or a dependent clause. Then you would read the rest of the sentence—whatever comes after the word “yelled”—and ask whether it’s complete or if it’s not.
Based on what you conclude about the nature of those two clauses, you'll THEN be able to narrow down how to put them together correctly using punctuation.
Conclusion
Today I shared with you my special method for determining what KIND of punctuation Q you’re working with…so that you can actually work the question the right way.
That’s not the only special method up my sleeve. Over my 1.5 decades of work in this field, I’ve developed efficient strategies for EVERY question type on the SAT and ACT. You can gain access to every one of those strategies by working with me one-on-one.
Alternatively, if you prefer studying solo, you can teach yourself how to answer every punctuation and grammar question type by perusing my ACT Grammar Cram Plan or SAT Ultimate Reading + Writing Guide.
