ACT English Flashcards

Commas to Seperate itmes in a series of three or more things.

I bought “coffee, tea, and milk.”

Every declarative sentece must end with a period

She loves chocolate”.”

Capitalize the first letter of a sentence.

“I” love milk.

Capitalize proper nouns.

Name, days of the week, names of months.

Do not use an apostrophe to form a plural word.

Incorrect: I love cat’s. Correct: I love cats.

Apostrophes are used for contractions or to show posessions.

Don’t, Jack’s, Dog’s

Every question or interrogative sentence must end with a question mark.

When does you shcool start?

Use an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence to express excitement, strong emotion, or a sense of urgency.

You look beautiful! / Watch out!

Use a comma to separate independent clauses (complete thoughts) when they’re joined by the following conjuctions.

Incorrect: I want to go out tonight but I need to study. Correct: I want to go out tonight, but I need to study.

Use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses.

I love coffee; you love tea.

Use a colon to introduce a list of items.

They serve many tupes of food: Chinese, Mexican, and American.

Use a hyphen to join two or more words that serve as single adjectives before a noun.

Kind-hearted woman / Brand-new television

Use a hypehn with compound numbers.

Ninety-nine, twenty-one

Run-ons & Fragments

A complete sentence contains a subject, a predicate verb, and a complete thought. If any of the three is lacking, the sentence is called a fragment.

Verbs: Subject-Verb Agreement & Verb Tenses

The ACT English section often includes long sentences in which the main subject and the verb are separated by many words or clauses. If you identify the subject of each sentence and make sure the verb matches it, you can ace this grammar rule.

Punctuation

Commas, apostrophes, colons, semicolons, dashes, periods, question marks, and exclamation points.

Wordiness

As long as there are no new grammar errors introduced, the shortest answer choice is often correct. Redundancy is a type of wordiness where the same thing is said twice such as “happy and joyful.” Keep it simple and to the point.