Business Communication Today, 12e (Bovee/Thill)
Handbook of Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage
1) Which of the following is a demonstrative pronoun?
A) He
B) This
C) Who
D) Anyone
2) Which of the following possessive phrases is not correct?
A) The team’s contract with the players
B) The teams’ contract with the players
C) Its advantages to the players
D) It’s advantages to the players
3) What is the tense of the verb in this sentence? “We had given Tim the money a week before
he arrived.”
A) Present
B) Past
C) Future
D) Past perfect
4) Which of the following italicized words is an adjective?
A) too dark
B) silent movie
C) into the theater
D) badly missed
5) Which of the following is a sentence fragment?
A) The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
B) He put the package in the mail right away.
C) Come here.
D) Moxie, depending on his friends for support.
6) What is the problem with this sentence? “We can give him a small raise, he deserves it.”
A) Comma splice
B) Sentence fragment
C) Dangling modifier
D) Nothing
7) Which of the following punctuation marks is used to separate a dependent clause at the
beginning of a sentence from the rest of the sentence?
A) Semicolon
B) Colon
C) Comma
D) Dash
8) Which of the following terms should not be hyphenated?
A) The relationship was long-term.
B) We had a long-term relationship.
C) That is one self-confident politician.
D) I introduced her as my ex-wife.
9) In the following sentence, which word should not be capitalized? “After talking with President
Hilda Bruckner, he decided that the Insurance industry would provide a suitable career for
someone who was a graduate of the Department of Business at Gable University.”
A) Department
B) President
C) Gable
D) Insurance
10) Which of the following words is misspelled?
A) Accomodate
B) Exaggerate
C) Occurrence
D) Receive
11) The plural of “son-in-law” is “sons-in-law,” but the possessive is “son-in-law’s.”
12) The pronoun “who” is in the nominative case; the pronoun “whom” is in the objective case.
13) The verb “do” is an example of a regular verb.
14) The difference between “lie” and “lay” is that “lie” is an intransitive verb and “lay” is a
transitive verb.
15) Many adverbs are formed by adding “-ly” to adjectives.
16) A linking verb is always followed by a noun, pronoun, or adjective.
17) A semicolon is used to separate independent clauses when the second clause begins with a
conjunctive adverb such as “however” or “therefore.”
18) You should include a comma when a date consists only of the month and year.
19) Punctuation goes inside quotation marks if the whole sentence is quoted but outside the
quotation marks if only the last part of the sentence is a quote.
20) The following sentence uses all words correctly: She was disinterested in paying me a
complement.