Question 1

Which of the following sentences is punctuated correctly?

Accepted Answer

A)  The cat ate its food, and then it went outside. 
B)  The cat ate its food and then it went outside. 
C)  The cat ate its food and, then, it went outside. A

Question 2

Which of the following sentences is correctly punctuated?

Accepted Answer

A)  The man went into town and he bought a car. 
B)  The man went into town, and he bought a car. 
C)  After the man went to town he bought a car. B

Question 3

Looking through the window, the couch is on the left. The sentence above is an example of

Accepted Answer

A)  a comma splice 
B)  a gerund 
C)  a dangling participle A

Question 4

Choose the sentence that is correct:

Accepted Answer

A)  Everyone ate their cake. 
B)  Everyone ate there cake. 
C)  Everyone ate his or her cake.

Question 5

Dr. Smith, an all-around nice guy, lectures on Monday mornings. The underlined material is:

Accepted Answer

A)  an appositive phrase 
B)  an example of parallelism 
C)  a dependent clause

Question 6

What is wrong with the sentence below?
Having just finished the exam, George saw the sky and it looked bright and wonderful.

Accepted Answer

A)  AP style error 
B)  punctuation error 
C)  pronoun-antecedent agreement

Question 7

Which of the following sentences uses the active voice?

Accepted Answer

A)  The ball was thrown by John. 
B)  He was taken to the hospital by an ambulance 
C)  The pitcher stared at the hitter with hatred in his eyes.

Question 8

Which of the sentences below represents a comma splice.

Accepted Answer

A)  George could not make it, so we left without him. 
B)  George could not make it, we left without him. 
C)  George could not make it; we left without him.

Question 9

What kind of error is contained in the sentence below? The polise arrived just as the shooting ended.

Accepted Answer

A)  Cliché 
B)  Spelling error 
C)  Error in agreement 
D)  Redundancy 
E)  Punctuation error

Question 10

In which voice is the verb in the sentence below? Jim was asked by his closet friend to be a groomsman.

Accepted Answer

A)  active 
B)  passive 
C)  subjective

Question 11

The major use of punctuation in writing is to

Accepted Answer

A)  slow the reader down 
B)  bring the reader to a stop 
C)  help the reader understand the writing

Question 12

Choose the correct word that should begin the following sentence:
_____ time to feed the cat.

Accepted Answer

A)  Its 
B)  It's 
C)  Its'

Question 13

Which of the statements below is correct?

Accepted Answer

A)  Grammatical mistakes are ok as long as the meaning of the writing is clear. 
B)  Grammar rules change so rapidly that no one can write something that grammatically perfect. 
C)  Everything a professional writer writes should be grammatically perfect.

Question 14

What is the correct punctuation for a direct quote?

Accepted Answer

A)  "The Congress should pass this legislation" the president said. 
B)  "The Congress should pass this legislation", the president said. 
C)  "The Congress should pass this legislation," the president said. 
D)  "The Congress should pass this legislation." The president said.

Question 15

The underlined phrase in the following sentence is an example of what? John, my brother, left home for the Army.

Accepted Answer

A)  preposition 
B)  gerund 
C)  appositive

Question 16

What is the definition of a non-essential clause?

Accepted Answer

A)  a group of words that is not essential to the meaning of the sentence and may be set off from
The rest of the sentence by commas 
B)  a group of words that is essential to the meaning of the sentence but is set off by commas 
C)  a group of words that is not essential to the meaning of the sentence but must not be set off from the rest of the sentence by commas

Exam 2: Basic Tools of Writing