Identifying Other Phrase, Clause, and Sentence Errors

This sentence has a problem with parallelism. The items in the list should be formatted the same. The corrected sentence reads, "She aspired to someday live in Barcelona, learn Spanish, and travel through the country."

This sentence has a problem with parallelism. The verbs “communicate” and “solving” should be formatted in the same way, since they are the two things it was "more difficult" for Mary to do. Since only "solving it," and not "communicate," is underlined, "solving it" contains the sentence's error and is the correct answer. The corrected sentence reads, "Although it was easy for Mary to identify the problem, she found it more difficult to communicate with the technical crew and solve it."

This sentence does not demonstrate proper parallel structure among the elements in the list. Each should be formatted similarly. So, because the first two elements in the list are gerunds ("running" and "cleaning"), the noun phrase "records of inventory" should be changed to a gerund as well. The corrected sentence reads, "When I worked for Mr. Tipler, my daily duties included running the cash register, cleaning the store, and recording inventory."

In this sentence, the independent clauses "Virtue is, in many ways, a foreign idea to him" and "every kind gesture he thinks he knows is proven false" are linked with a comma. This is called a comma splice and should be avoided. Replacing the comma with a semicolon fixes the error.

The forms of verbs used in a list need to agree for the sentence to use proper parallelism. Because the sentence begins its list of two items with "creating," "reduce" should be changed to "reducing" in order to match the form of "creating." So, the corrected sentence would read, "Important things to remember when adding fractions include creating a common denominator and reducing."

The three elements in the list should be formatted in the same way. Since the first two are just nouns without verbals, the third should be too. The corrected sentence reads, "The evening's entertainment consisted of a jazz quartet, a juggler, and a game of musical chairs."

This sentence compares two unlike things: the action of making ice cream and the description of “store-bought.” Structure these two things similarly for the sentence to make more sense: "I would rather make my own ice cream than buy it from the store."

This sentence does not demonstrate proper parallel structure among the elements in the list. Each should be formatted similarly. So, because the first two elements in the list are gerunds ("running" and "cleaning"), the noun phrase "records of inventory" should be changed to a gerund as well. The corrected sentence reads, "When I worked for Mr. Tipler, my daily duties included running the cash register, cleaning the store, and recording inventory."

In this sentence, the independent clauses "Virtue is, in many ways, a foreign idea to him" and "every kind gesture he thinks he knows is proven false" are linked with a comma. This is called a comma splice and should be avoided. Replacing the comma with a semicolon fixes the error.

This sentence is a fragment, because it does not have a main verb. Changing the noun phrase “the audience’s worry” to a noun and verb fixes this nicely: "In particular, the audience worried that the vicious dogs might bite."