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Tips for GMAT Sentence Correction

Following is a list of tips for GMAT Sentence Correction — one of three basic question formats you'll encounter during the exam's Verbal section. (Sentence Correction will account for 14-15 of 41 available Verbal questions.) Also see this tutorial, which expounds on some of these tips.

  1. Don't worry about punctuation and spelling. Neither is tested in GMAT Sentence Correction.

  2. Don't bother reading the first answer choice. The first of the five answer choices simply repeats the underlined part of the sentence.

  3. Avoid "hyper-correcting." Many test takers tend to "hyper-correct" — that is, to find problems with the original sentece even if there aren't any. Remember: the original version is just as likely as any others to be the best one.

  4. Trust your ear. If an answer choice sounds awkward in the context of the sentence, avoid over-analyzing it. Instead, trust your ear and eliminate it.

  5. Look for clarity and conciseness. A question might provide more than one choice that is grammatically correct in context. If so, select the one that gives the sentence the clearest meaning without resorting to redundancy or undue wordiness.

  6. Beware any choice that fixes a problem but creates a new one. Just because an answer choice corrects every problem with the original sentence, don't assume that it's the best one. It might introduce a new grammatical error, diction error or usage problem, or it might be wordy or awkward.

  7. Subject your selection to a proper "test." Before confirming your response, be sure to read the entire sentence — from beginning to end — with the correction you've chosen as the best version. If the sentence sounds proper to you, go with it and move on to the next question.