Your Comprehensive Guide to the SAT

SAT Writing

I've developed a simple list of rules to follow to conquer the writing section. You do need to know some basic rules of grammar (even less punctuation), but after that, it's simply a matter of learning and following the rules. These rules are based around the very limited types of errors the SAT makes on these questions.

The Writing and Language Arts section has four essays and 44 total questions. The essays are about a variety of topics, including careers, science humanities, history and social studies.

There are two broad categories of questions. One is usage/mechanics. These questions are the about the technicals aspects of English, such as verb tenses, commas, dashes, appositives, semicolons, modifiers, etc. The other broad type is rhetoric. These questions will where sentences should be placed, what certain sentences provide to an essay, whether sentences should be added or deleted, or how to appropriately transition between topics.