Sentence Correction Basics

[abhisays]

The word ambiguous means capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways.

For example, the following sentence is ambiguous:
John is playing with the boy because he wants to.
It is unclear whether he refers to John or to the boy.

Ambiguity is the noun, and it means uncertainty or lack of clarity of meaning.

Example:

The ambiguity of the above sentence means that different people might understand it differently: some will claim that the word he refers to John while others will claim that he refers to the boy.

Knowing these words is very important for answering Sentence Correction questions correctly. The correct answer to a Sentence Correction question should be clear - not ambiguous. Ambiguity is one of the two stylistic GMAT mistakes (the other one is redundancy).

[abhisays]

Unequivocal means leaving no doubt, clear, unambiguous. Unequivocal is the opposite of the word ambiguous.

Example: The language of the law should be plain and unequivocal.

The word unequivocal is very important for Sentence Correction questions. The correct answer to a Sentence Correction question should be clear and unequivocal.

[abhisays]

Redundancy means repetition of linguistic information, excessive wordiness or repetition in expression.

Example: An example of redundancy is using both and and also in the same sentence.

Redundant means characterized by similarity or repetition.

Example: Adding the word also after the word and is redundant as they both have the same meaning.

These words are very important for Sentence Correction questions. The correct answer to a Sentence Correction question should be not only grammatically correct but also NOT redundant.

[abhisays]

Concise means expressing or covering much in few words. It is the opposite of redundant.

Example:

A concise sentence is a sentence that contains no unnecessary words and expresses the maximum meaning with the minimum number of words.
The word concise is important for Sentence Correction questions. A correct answer to a Sentence Correction question should be not only grammatically correct but also concise.

[abhisays]

Out of 41 questions in the Verbal section, 14-17 questions are Sentence Correction questions, which makes them the most common question type in this section.
The recommended time per question is 1:30 minutes.

[abhisays]

1. The maximum number of mistakes in the original sentence in a Sentence Correction question is 2. That means that some questions contain no mistakes, some contain one mistake, and some contain two mistakes.
2. The mistakes in Sentence Correction questions are never spelling mistakes. Each and every word used in Sentence Correction is an existing correctly spelled word. You won't see things like sleeped or taked and you won't see made up words. On the other hand, there could be punctuation mistakes such as a missing comma.
3. The GMAT does not deal with English mastery - it deals with logic and cognitive skills. Thus, the correct answer choice must be logically correct. A sentence such as "The green dream barks" is grammatically correct but illogical.
4. The correct answer choice corrects whatever mistakes the original sentence had, but does not radically change its overall meaning. So radical changes to the sentence's meaning may also be a reason for eliminating answer choices. Subtle changes of wording, however, are common, and are usually not considered meaning changes.
5. We don't look for a correct answer choice - we eliminate incorrect answer choices and choose the last answer choice standing. Why? Because there are numerous ways of correcting mistakes, and we never know which way will be chosen. If we look for an answer choice that corrects the mistake in a certain way, we might not find such an answer choice, or we might (heaven forbid) eliminate the correct answer choice because it corrects the mistake in a different way