Special Sub-Topic: What's Your "Grammar Correctness Quotient?" I Click Here To Play: What's Your "Grammar Correctness Quotient?" I

Which sentence is grammatically incorrect in American usage?

Everybody danced with their own partner.. According to American usage, the collective noun "everybody" is singular; therefore, modifying pronouns must also be singular. The sentence should read: "Everybody danced with his (her) own partner." British English rules are a bit more flexible.

A verb ending in "-ing" that is used as a noun in a sentence is a:

gerund. Hereŭs an example: "WALKING is considered the best form of exercise." In this sentence, the gerund "walking" is being used as a noun, and the subject of this sentence.

In which of the following sentences may be found a verb in the present perfect progressive tense?

Has Mr. Smith been taking his medicine on time?. The present perfect progressive tense indicates action or a state of being sometime before now, up to now, as in the sentence "Has Mr. Smith been taking his medicine on time?"

The rules of American English strictly forbid the splitting of infinitives.

f. False. In fact, sometimes it's desirable to split an infinitive. Remember the opening narration to the original "Star Trek" television series, where Captain Kirk says: "To boldly go where no man has gone before?" Now imagine him saying "To go boldly" or "Boldly to go..."

The two main parts of a sentence are:

subject and predicate. The subject of a sentence is what the sentence is about. The predicate of the sentence says something about the subject.

Which part of speech establishes a relationship of space, time, cause, accompaniment, or manner between its object and another word in the sentence?

preposition. A few examples of prepositions are: under, about, in, out, throughout, at.

"Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, wrote the Gettysburg Address." In the preceding sentence, the phrase "the sixteenth President of the United States" is what kind of phrase?

appositive phrase. An appositive phrase is one that supplements, identifies, or explains the meaning of the word or words it adjoins.

Which of the following sentences is grammatically incorrect?

Their's is the only group that showed up on time.. In the sentence "Their's is the only group that showed up on time.", the word "theirs" should not have an apostrophe in it. The other choices are all grammatically acceptable.

According to American usage, it is acceptable to place a preposition at the end of a sentence.

t. True. Sentences like: "What's the movie about?" and "We have never been to London before." are perfectly acceptable with prepositions located at the end.

Which of the following sentences is grammatically correct?

It was I who had the keys to the president's office.. The grammatically correct sentence is "It was I who had the keys to the president's office." It is a very common mistake to say: "It was me who had the keys to the president's office." In this case, the word "I" is a subject complement, and therefore must be in the subjective case "I" rather than the objective case "me." The other choices all contain grammatical errors.