Writing Skills: MDCAT Notes and MCQs
Subject–verb agreement — key rules
- Singular subject → singular verb. Ignore phrases between subject and verb: "The box of apples is heavy."
- Either/neither … or/nor: verb agrees with the nearer subject: "Neither the teacher nor the students were present."
- Each, every, everyone, nobody, one of → singular: "One of my friends is a doctor."
- Along with, as well as, together with, besides do not change the subject: "The captain, along with his players, was honoured."
- Subjects joined by and → plural (unless one idea: "Bread and butter is my breakfast").
- The number of → singular; a number of → plural. Words like news, mathematics, physics → singular; scissors, trousers, cattle, police → plural.
Faulty sentence structure
- Fragment: incomplete sentence ("Because he was late.").
- Run-on / comma splice: two clauses joined without proper punctuation ("I was tired, I went to bed") — fix with full stop, semicolon or conjunction.
- Dangling modifier: "Walking to school, the rain started" ✗ → "Walking to school, I was caught in the rain" ✓.
- Faulty parallelism: "She likes reading, writing and to swim" ✗ → "reading, writing and swimming" ✓.
- Redundancy: "return back", "repeat again", "revert back", "free gift" ✗. Double comparatives "more better" ✗.
Commonly confused words & spellings
| Pair | Usage |
|---|---|
| affect / effect | affect = verb (to influence); effect = noun (result) |
| principal / principle | principal = head/main; principle = rule |
| stationary / stationery | stationary = not moving; stationery = paper, pens |
| its / it's | its = possessive; it's = it is |
| lose / loose | lose = misplace; loose = not tight |
| advice / advise | advice = noun; advise = verb |
Frequently misspelled: accommodate, occurrence, embarrass, necessary, separate, definitely, receive, privilege, committee, maintenance, conscience, rhythm, millennium, questionnaire.
PMDC learning outcomes for this unit
- Proofreading: 3.1 Proofread and edit their own, peers' and given text for errors of usage and style.
- Proofreading: 3.2 Faulty sentence structure
- Proofreading: 3.3 Subject–verb agreement
- Proofreading: 3.4 Errors of function words and spellings