Common sentence-level errors to watch for: which is NOT a commonly cited error?

• A. Fragments
• B. Run-ons
• C. Subject-verb agreement
• D. Spelling mistakes

Answer: (D)

Understanding what counts as a sentence-level error means focusing on the sentence’s structure and how its parts fit together. A fragment is an incomplete thought that doesn’t form a full sentence. For example, a phrase like “Because of the rain” leaves you hanging without a main clause. A run-on happens when two independent thoughts are joined without proper punctuation or a conjunction, such as “I went to the store I bought bread.” Subject-verb agreement errors occur when the verb form doesn’t match the subject in number, like “The list of items are on the table,” where the correct form is “is.”

Spelling mistakes, by contrast, involve incorrect letters or misspelled words. They affect word accuracy and readability, but they don’t disrupt the sentence’s grammatical structure itself. That’s why spelling mistakes are not typically categorized as a sentence-level error. When you’re checking sentences, you’ll most often address fragments, run-ons, and subject-verb agreement to fix structural issues, and then you’d proofread for spelling as a separate step.