Comma Chameleon
We use commas to separate this from a Complete Sentence.
What is a fragment?
These types of words generally fall into two categories: (1) Positional and (2) Directional.
What are prepositions?
To avoid creating a comma splice, just try using one of these to separate two complete sentences.
What is a period?
Read this first for every new passage.
What is the title?
The author is considering adding a sentence to the paragraph. He should do so only if the information is neither of these two twin no-nos.
What are redundancy and irrelevancy?
Use a comma with one of these to separate two complete sentences.
What is a conjunction?
What is a complete sentence?
A period, a comma-conjunction, and this type of punctuation are all basically the same on the ACT.
What is a semicolon?
In order to "hear" Subject-Verb agreement, remove these from the sentence.
What are prepositional phrases?
In the following sentence, replacing the word "who" with the word "they" would create this type of mistake.
All of the students, who were taking the ACT, had been studying diligently.
What is a comma splice?
This type of appositive requires a comma between two nouns or noun phrases.
What is a non-essential appositive?
Just about anything can come out of it, but the golden rule is that these must follow a complete sentence.
What is a colon?
Don't mix-and-match these with your commas whenever they separate a fragment from an otherwise complete sentence.
What are dashes or parentheses?
Find one of these if you are asked about deleting the underlined portion of the sentence.
What are synonyms?
These three words help you know that "who" is the correct relative pronoun.
What are He, She, and They?
However, Moreover, In addition to... Don't forget to place commas around these.
What are transition words?
One of two types of run-on sentences, this one contains no punctuation between two complete sentences.
What is a fused sentence?
Use this type of punctuation at the end of the sentence when the complete sentence contains an interrogative.
What is a question mark?
This type of punctuation signals you to stop reading and start looking for 1, 2, 3, 4 or A, B, C, D in answer section of one of the passage's remaining questions.
What are brackets?
A fused sentence is created by inserting this punctuation between two complete sentences.
What is nothing?
Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. Little Red Riding Hood doesn't need to place commas between these three types of phrases.
What are prepositional phrases?
This is when all the verbs within a paragraph are of the same tense.
What is parallelism?
You should use these to separate a list of lists, but you're never going to see that on the ACT.
What is a semicolon?
Read this again when answering the last question(s) of a passage.
What is the title?
Keep it or delete it. You should delete information that is either irrelevant or this.
What is redundant?