Spotting Errors Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The error is in to have moved up from 50 million to 200 million sticks per day.

Sales are estimated to have moved is correct in itself, but the sentence has run two clauses together without a conjunction after Gold Flake Kings; the perfect infinitive is left without a properly formed subject to attach to.

Answer: B

The error is in their luggages.

Luggage is uncountable and has no plural. Pieces of luggage is the way to count it.

Answer: C

The error is in without his coming too.

The reference is to the other of the two friends, so the sentence needs without the other coming too. His is ambiguous, and too suggests an addition rather than the accompaniment meant.

Answer: C

The error is in senior than me.

Senior takes to, not than, and the pronoun after it is the object form: senior to me. Junior, superior, inferior, prior and preferable follow the same rule.

Answer: D

There is no error.

Hardly pairs with when, which the sentence has, and the past perfect had spoken correctly precedes the simple past stopped.

Answer: B

The error is in show a mind fully awake in.

Awake takes to before what one is alive to: awake to the possibilities. In would describe a location rather than an awareness.

Answer: A

There is no error.

The first conditional is correctly formed with the present simple in the if-clause and will in the main clause.

Answer: C

The error is in did they?

None of the students is treated as singular here, and the statement is already negative, so the tag must be positive and singular: did he? In practice the sentence is better recast, since a tag on none is always awkward.

Answer: C

The error is in or in a small one.

Just as ... as requires as in the second half of the comparison: just as unhappy in a vast area as in a small one. Or breaks the correlative pair.

Answer: A

The error is in he is working in.

For the past several months reaches from the past to now, which takes the present perfect continuous: he has been working. The present continuous covers only the present.