Editing for grammar and usage on the Grade 10 ELA MCAS: correcting errors in subject-verb and pronoun agreement, verb tense, commonly confused words, capitalization, and spelling in a draft, identifying the single best correction, as tested in editing items and rewarded in the Standard English Conventions trait of the long composition.

What this skill is asking

Editing is correcting a draft's grammar, usage, and mechanics, and the Grade 10 ELA MCAS tests it with items that present a sentence and ask for the single best correction. The errors editing targets are the conventions: subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement and clear reference, verb tense consistency, commonly confused words (there/their/they're, its/it's), capitalization, and spelling. Editing differs from revising: editing fixes how a sentence is written without changing its ideas, while revising improves the ideas and structure. The skill students lose ground on is choosing a "correction" that changes the meaning, or fixing something that is not the error. This page covers the high-frequency editing targets and the discipline of finding the one change that fixes the sentence. The transferable skill is proofreading precisely, which earns editing items and the Standard English Conventions trait on the long composition.

The high-frequency editing targets

The first move is to know the errors the test most often plants.

These are the same conventions covered in the language module, here applied to spotting and fixing an error in a draft. The reliable method is to read the sentence and ask, in order, whether the subject and verb agree, whether the pronouns agree and refer clearly, whether the tense is consistent, and whether any commonly confused word is misused. A systematic pass catches the planted error, and because each editing item usually contains one main error, naming the error type points you straight to the fix.

Finding the single best correction

Because editing items and the essay's conventions trait test the same rules, the proofreading habit you build here pays off directly when you write: the reader who can spot a tense shift or a misused "its" in an editing item can catch the same error in their own draft. Build a short mental checklist, agreement, tense, reference, confused words, capitalization, spelling, and run it on the sentence in the item and on every paragraph of your long composition. The skill is the same; only the text changes.

Working an editing item

Try this

Q1. With "neither the players nor the coach," does the verb agree with "players" or "coach," and why? [Recall]

• Cue. With "neither...nor," the verb agrees with the nearer subject, which is "coach" (singular), so the verb is "was": "Neither the players nor the coach was ready."

Q2. Edit: "Each of the students brought their own lunch, and they're responsible for it." What would you check? [Short explanation]

• Cue. Check pronoun agreement and usage. "Their" with "each" is widely accepted, though "his or her" is more formal and making the subject plural ("students") is cleanest; "they're" (they are) is correct here; and "it" clearly refers to the lunch. Expanding "they're" to "they are" confirms it fits.