Exploring Writing 2nd Edition by John Langan

Exercise 47

EDITING TEST 5
Identify the ten sentence-skills mistakes at the underlined spots in the student paper that follows. From the box below, choose the letter that describes each mistake and write that letter in the space provided. (The same kind of mistake may appear more than once.) Then, in the spaces between the lines, edit and correct each mistake.
a. fragment
b. run-on
c. mistake in subject-verb agreement
d. misplaced modifier
e. dangling modifier
f. missing comma
g. wordiness
h. slang
The United States will never be a drug-free we could eliminate many of our drug-related problems by legalizing drugs. Drugs would be sold by companies and not criminals The drug trade would then take place like any the police and courts to devote their time to other problems. Lawful drugs would be sold at a fair one would need to steal in order to buy them. organized crime would lose one of its major sources of revenue. would, instead, create important tax revenues for the government. Finally, if drugs sold through legal outlets, we could reduce drug problems among our young people. It would be illegal to sell drugs to people under a certain age. And because the profits on drugs would no longer there would be little incentive for drug pushers to sell to young people. Decriminalizing drugs, in short, could be a solution. 0
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