Overview:
The English usage that is tested on standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, is formal academic English. It may or may not reflect how students usually speak or even write. The term idiom error refers to formal usage rather than common usage.
Similar Meanings and Spellings
The difference between using the correct word form and the incorrect form is sometimes determined by matching the spelling and the meaning. The word affect is either the verb “to influence”, or more rarely, in psychology, a synonym for emotion. It does not mean the same thing as the word effect, which is either a noun meaning result or a verb “to cause”. Similarly, adapt means “to change”, while adopt means “to take as one’s own.” The two word phrase all ready means that all are ready. The word already is an adverb referring to time.
Awkward Phrases
There are a number of phrases that do not add anything to meaning, and can be either dropped or reworded. The phrase “as to” can be replaced with “about”, and the phrase “being that” can be replaced with either because or since. Similarly, the phrase “the fact that” can be dropped entirely. Phrases such as kind of or sort of can be replaced with rather or somewhat.
Nonstandard Words and Phrases
The phrase all right has two separate words. “Alright” is not standard. Similarly, the adverbs anywhere, somewhere, everywhere, and nowhere do not end with an s. The word irregardless is a double negative, so appropriate usage is the word regardless. The contraction ain’t is also nonstandard, and should be replaced with a more appropriate contraction.
Other Formal Phrases
The phrase different from is more appropriate than different than, and the phrase due to means the same as caused by. The word among means three or more, and between is used to compare two things. In addition, phrases such as outside of, inside of, off of or atop of should be replaced with the prepositions outside, inside, off, and atop. Most of these words and phrases will not be caught by a typical spell-checking word processing program.
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