Summary
◦ When faced with a Writing and Language question, always check what’s changing in the answer
choices and use POE.
◦ The correct answers across a lot of different parts of speech can be summed up succinctly with
three basic terms: Consistency, Precision, and Concision. You don’t need to know a ton of grammar
if you can remember these three basic rules:
- Consistency: Correct answers are consistent with the rest of the sentence and the passage.
- Precision: Correct answers are as precise as possible.
- Concision: Barring other errors, correct answers are as concise as possible.
◦ When you see verbs changing in the answer choices, make sure those verbs are consistent with their
subjects as well as with other verbs in the sentence and surrounding sentences.
◦ When the nouns are changing in the answer choices, make sure those nouns are consistent with the
other nouns in the sentence and the paragraph.
◦ Once you are sure that a word or phrase is consistent with the non-underlined portion of the
sentence, make that word or phrase as precise as you can.
◦ Concision is key when you want to communicate meaning. As long as the grammar and punctuation
are good to go, the correct answer will almost always be the shortest.
