3.1 Grammar: Apostrophes, Quotation Marks & Spelling

3.1 Grammar: Apostrophes, Quotation Marks & Spelling

Grammar is defined by the exam publisher as knowledge of writing "with respect to word usage, spelling, and punctuation." It sits under Crystallized Intelligence with Vocabulary and is worth five of the 65 cognitive items.

Two facts about scope should lower your anxiety and sharpen your study:

1. Every grammar item has the same format. The publisher states that "all of the grammar items on the examination will ask you to identify the answer option that correctly completes a sentence." You are choosing among four candidate completions, not diagnosing an error in a paragraph.
2. The level is deliberately ordinary. The guide recommends "a text that teaches high school-level (8th to 10th grade) grammar and style rules," and notes that "the examination will only ask questions about conventional and commonly-accepted practices," because style manuals disagree on the finer points. It adds that "any misspelled words for which questions are asked will be commonly used words that the majority of individuals should be capable of spelling."

That is a narrow, learnable target. This section covers punctuation mechanics and spelling; section 3.2 covers agreement, pronouns, modifiers and commonly confused words.

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1. Apostrophes: Possession

The possessive-pronoun rule is absolute and worth committing to memory as a list: hers, yours, theirs, ours, whose, its. None of them takes an apostrophe. Every one of them has a look-alike that does, and that is exactly where items are built.

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2. The Its / It's Distinction

This is the single most frequently tested apostrophe rule in English, and the guide calls it out explicitly.

• its = belonging to it. The patrol vehicle lost its left front tire tread.
• it's = the contraction of it is or it has. It's mandatory to wear body armor.

The possessive form of "it" does not contain an apostrophe; the apostrophe is reserved for the contraction. The reliable check is substitution: read the sentence with "it is" in place of the word. If it still makes sense, you want it's. If it does not, you want its.

• "Sandra had to replace her radio after it is speaker stopped working." — nonsense, so the answer is its.

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3. Apostrophes: Contractions

When words are contracted, the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters — and it goes exactly where those letters were, not at the seam between the words.

The recurring error is placing the apostrophe before the n in n't forms. Could not contracts by deleting the o, so the apostrophe sits where the o was: couldn't.

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4. Quotation Marks and Commas

The conventional pattern is that a quotation contained within a sentence "is preceded by a comma outside the quotation marks and/or is followed by a comma inside the quotation marks."

• Wrong: Mark said "I really hate when the air conditioner stops working."
• Right: Mark said*,** "I really hate when the air conditioner stops working."*

And in the reverse order:

• Wrong: "I really hate when the air conditioner stops working" Mark said.
• Right: "I really hate when the air conditioner stops working*,**" Mark said.*

In American usage, commas and periods go inside the closing quotation mark. That is the conventional practice the exam tests; the exceptions debated in style manuals are outside its scope.

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5. Spelling

The publisher's own sample grammar question is a spelling item: choose the correct completion of "As you become more tenured, you will _______ more time off," from aquire, adquire, acquire, acquier. The answer is acquire, and the recommended method is process of elimination: read each option and identify the specific rule it breaks, rather than relying on which one "looks right."

Words that are commonly used and commonly misspelled are the target pool. A short high-yield list:

Two rules cover a large share of these:

• i before e except after c — receive, deceive, perceive take ei after c; believe, achieve, relieve take ie.
• Doubling before a suffix. A one-syllable word or a word stressed on the final syllable doubles its final consonant before a vowel suffix: occur → occurred, refer → referred, begin → beginning. When the stress is not on the final syllable, no doubling: benefit → benefited, offer → offered.

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6. Method for Grammar Items

The publisher's procedure:

1. Read the sentence and the options and see whether the correct answer stands out.
2. If it does, insert it and reread the sentence to confirm it works in context.
3. If it does not, work by elimination. Read each option and articulate the specific rule it breaks. The guide is explicit: "Make sure you can come up with a spelling rule that is clearly broken in each instance."
4. What remains is your answer.

Step three is the discipline that separates a reliable score from a coin flip. "That looks wrong" is not a reason; "that puts the apostrophe before the n in a not contraction" is. Naming the rule takes two seconds and converts a hunch into a decision you can trust.

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7. Study Plan

Grammar is the ability with the highest ratio of score to study hours, because the rule set is small, fixed, and conventional. Two weeks of light work covers it:

• Work through a high-school or GED-level grammar and style workbook — the publisher's own recommendation.
• Keep a running list of words you have personally misspelled and drill only those; generic spelling lists waste time on words you already know.
• When you miss a practice item, write down the rule you violated. Rules accumulate; individual items do not.