The results are in!

651 of you attempted our Grammar Police Promotions Test; only 78 of you achieved the pass mark of 10/10 – and of that 78, only 30 managed it on their first attempt!

We will be issuing certificates over the next week to all students who achieved the pass mark on their first attempt. These students are now official Grammar Police Sergeants.

If you weren’t successful this time, do not be disheartened. Below, we’ll discuss the answers to the trickiest questions in the test.

The Tricky Questions

Here, the correct answer was the semicolon – as you shouldn’t use a comma to separate two main clauses.

If you’d like to know more about semicolons, look no further.

Almost 2/3 of our applicants got this question wrong. The correct answer is ‘bear’.

‘Bare’ can mean not covered or unsupported or basic.

The meaning we needed was tolerate – and for that, we needed the word bear.

This was a rather difficult question, and the correct answer was There is a comma splice, which 57.3% of you worked out. Comma splicing is when we join two separate sentences with a comma, when we should be using a full stop or a semicolon.

If you got this one wrong, have a look here for guidance on how to avoid comma splicing.

Almost a third of you got this one wrong. We needed the verb affect, and not the noun effect. (Effect can be a verb, but it has a very specific meaning that most people don’t use.) You can find more information on this here.

More people got this one wrong than right. We needed the spelling fazed, as to faze means to disturb or unsettle. To phase is to carry out in gradual stages.

Thank you to all of our applicants – regardless of whether or not you’ve been successful this time – and don’t forget to keep an eye out for your next opportunity to join the privileged ranks of the Lutterworth Grammar Police!

 

Chief Superintendent Shovlin