Form, Structure & Sense covers verbs, pronouns, agreement, modifiers, and parallelism — the "does this word form fit?" questions.
Cross out the fluff. Long phrases between subject and verb are there to hide agreement errors. Delete them to see what really connects.
High-frequency rules
- Subject–verb agreement: match the verb to the true subject, ignoring prepositional phrases ("the box of chocolates is…").
- Verb tense: use context/time markers; keep tenses consistent unless the timeline shifts.
- Pronoun–antecedent: a pronoun must match its noun in number ("each," "everyone" = singular).
- Modifier placement: an opening descriptive phrase must be followed immediately by the thing it describes.
- Parallelism: items in a list or comparison must share the same grammatical form.
Dangling modifier tell: "Walking to school, the rain began." The rain wasn't walking. The noun right after the comma must be the one doing the action.