Choose the Correct - Incorrect Sentence Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: The committee is divided on this issue.

A collective noun takes a singular verb when the body acts as one and a plural verb when its members act separately. Being divided is precisely the members acting separately, so it must be the committee are divided.

The other three are sound:

• Bread and butter is wholesome food - a single dish, so singular.
• It being a wet day, we kept indoors - a correct absolute construction.
• The cattle are grazing in the fields - cattle is always plural.

Answer: A

It should read images.

What is worshipped is an image of a god - a representation made for that purpose. A shape is merely a form, and carries none of the sense of a made likeness.

Answer: C

Correct answer: He blew out his brains with a gun, after bidding his wife goodbye.

With a gun names the instrument of blew out, so it belongs immediately after the object of that verb. The sentence then reads in the order of events: the farewell, then the act.

Why the others fail:

• He blew out with a gun his brains - the instrument is wedged between verb and object.
• after bidding his wife goodbye with a gun - this makes the gun the means of saying goodbye.
• With a gun, he blew out his brains - grammatical, but fronting the instrument gives it an emphasis the sentence does not want, and the standard order keeps it with the verb.

Answer: C

Correct answer: This is one of the best films that has been produced this year.

In one of the + plural noun + that, the relative clause describes the whole group, not the single item. The antecedent of that is films, so the verb must be plural: one of the best films that have been produced.

The other three are sound:

• She is one of the best mothers that have ever lived - the same construction, correctly plural.
• None of these words are now current - none takes a plural verb when it refers to a plural noun.
• Sam, as well as Alex and Jack, likes milk - as well as does not make a subject plural.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Starch is an antidote of iodine.

An antidote is to or for something, never of it.

The other three are sound:

• She has an abhorrence of frogs - abhorrence of is correct.
• This is the inference from his statement - an inference is drawn from something.
• I expostulated with Ravi about his decision - one expostulates with a person about a matter.

Answer: C

Correct answer: He will not pay unless he is compelled

Unless already means if not, so the clause it introduces stays positive and in the present tense even though the main clause is future.

Why the others fail:

• unless he is not compelled - a double negative, which says the opposite of what is meant.
• unless he will be compelled - a clause of condition or time does not take will.
• till he is compelled - till marks time, not condition, and changes the meaning.

Answer: A

It should read did you not throw.

Did already carries the past tense, so the main verb stays in the base form. Threw is the past tense and thrown the past participle; neither can follow did.

Answer: C

It should read to rise to.

To rise to the occasion is the idiom - to meet a demand well. Rise from would mean to get up out of it, which is not the sense.

Answer: B

Correct answer: I went to the bank yesterday to collect the pass book.

English word order in a simple statement is verb, then place, then time, then purpose. This sentence follows it exactly.

Why the others fail:

• I went yesterday to the bank - the time adverb is wedged between the verb and its destination.
• Yesterday to collect the pass-book I went to the bank - two adverbials are stacked ahead of the subject.
• To collect the pass-book yesterday, I went to the bank - yesterday now attaches to the collecting rather than to the going.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Our friends left in an imported car the hill station where they had been staying for quite some time.

In an imported car tells us how they left, so it stays with left, and where they had been staying stays with hill station. Both modifiers touch what they modify.

Why the others fail:

• Putting the car between hill station and where makes it look as though they had been staying in the car.
• Putting the car at the very end does the same thing more strongly.
• Our friends in an imported car left… - this describes the friends rather than the leaving, as though they were friends who live in a car.