Answer: “wished that she were able to fly; now, as a pilot, she does” This sentence requires a shift in verb voice and tense. As a child, Melissa wished that something were the case, and that requires the subjunctive mood “Melissa wished that she were able to fly” (note that “was” would be incorrect as it suggests that she really did fly as a child).  But nowadays it’s no longer a wish: she’s a pilot so she does fly.  Note that the verbs “is” or “does” have to carry over a verb that has already been stated (“fly”).  The word “is” cannot work, because you would never say “she is fly” but instead would have to say “she is flying.”  But you can say “she does fly,” making “she does” correct.

 If you want to play soccer on Tuesday, he or she must call the park first. This sentence does NOT correct the error in the shift of person. “Someone” is the third person and “you” is the second person so these tenses do not match. The same goes for “If you want to play soccer on Tuesday, he or she must call the park first.” “You” is the second person and “he or she” is third-person singular so they are mismatched. The other choices are all in the same tense and have corrected the error.

The word “take” in the first portion of the sentence is written in an imperative mood while “you should call” in the second half is written in an indicative mood so there is a shift in mood. An imperative mood gives a command while an indicative mood states a fact or asks a question. In order to correct the shift, both parts of the sentence must be in the same mood. By correcting the sentence with “and then call the doctor.” both halves are now written in an imperative mood.

This answer choice has an improper shift in verb tense. “Last month” sets the sentence in the past tense, “threw” is also past tense, but then it shifts to future tense with “will recover”. If this is happening during the same game it should say “and recovered a fumble” to maintain the same tense throughout. The other choices are all in the same tense and there are no errors in shifts.

The first portion of the sentence is in active voice and the subjects of the sentence (the two brothers) are performing the action. The second half is in the passive voice “was heard” so the subjects are no longer being active but instead are acted upon. When changing the phrasing to “and they heard a screeching sound.” both halves are in active voice and there is no error in shifts.

In the question there is a shift in the number related to the pronouns. “Someone” is singular while “them” is plural so there is an error with the selected pronouns. All the other answer choices have corrected this error but “This afternoon when people call for me, tell him or her that I went to the store for groceries and will call back later.” is still mismatched. “People” is a plural pronoun and “him or her” is a singular pronoun so it did NOT correct the error.

Answer: "team; her".  A semicolon is used to separate two independent clauses (independent clauses are two thoughts that could each be their own sentence).  You cannot simply use a comma to perform this task, so “team, her” is incorrect. If you use a period you must capitalize the next word, so “team. her” is incorrect. And without any punctuation the reader cannot easily tell where one thought ends and the next begins, so “team her” leads to a run-on sentence and is incorrect.

Answer: “distances, but Shannon” One way to separate independent clauses is with a comma plus a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so - you can use the acronym FANBOYS to remember them). Here you have two complete thoughts: “many people dislike running long distances” and “Shannon seems to really enjoy it.” And every answer choice includes the coordinating conjunction “but.” This calls for the comma + but construction, so “Many people dislike running long distances, but Shannon seems to really enjoy it” is correct.

Answer: NO CHANGE. When a list contains several long elements, as this list does, it is appropriate to use semicolons to separate those elements. Here note that the second element (“her sister, Eliza, is a New York City socialite…”) even includes its own commas around the word “Eliza” (used to modify “her sister”) - this helps to demonstrate the case for using semicolons so that commas within the long phrases in each element don’t get confused as new elements in the list.  Among the incorrect answer choices, one uses no punctuation at all and creates a very long, very hard to read sentence. Similarly, another places the word “and” between the elements, but that’s incorrect (you wouldn’t say “I play basketball and soccer and baseball” - you’d separate the sports with punctuation and use “and” before the last one). And one choice mixes commas between elements (“, and her sister Eliza”) and a semicolon between others (“; and her sister Peggy”). When separating items in a long list you can choose to separate the items with commas or with semicolons, but you cannot use one of each. Plus that sentence also repeats the multiple “and” problem.

Answer: "Most people thought that the performance was a disaster, but Allysin was proud of her solo at the end of Act One." The correct answer uses a single comma between “disaster, but” to indicate that there are two independent clauses (essentially complete sentences) going on: 1) most people thought that the performance was a disaster, and 2) Allysin was proud of her own performance.  The comma creates a pause between those thoughts to help the reader know that they’re separate, and the coordinating conjunction “but” highlights that the two thoughts oppose each other (people thought it was bad, but she thought it was good).