SAT Prep - Writing

Idioms are expressions in the English language that are stated a certain way because that is accepted practice.  There is no real grammatical reason for some of these idiomatic expressions to be as they are, but it is still an error to use an idiomatic expression incorrectly.  Idiom errors are tested frequently in the Identifying Sentence Error questions, so the incorrect idiomatic phrase will be underlined.  The good news is, you probably know most of these expressions just from speaking English, so you just need to focus on each of the underlined words and make sure that the correct idiomatic phrase is used.

Idioms may be expressions like:

• A day late and a dollar short
• A penny saved is a penny earned

These types of idiomatic expressions, or sayings, are not tested very often (if at all) on the SATs.  Many of them don't necessarily make a lot of sense, and non-Native English speakers who aren't familiar with the expression would likely not really understand the full meaning of one of these clichéd phrases.   

Idioms also frequently require a specific preposition to accompany certain words.  The use of the wrong preposition is grammatically incorrect.  These types of prepositional pairings are tested on the SAT, and are much more important to know and understand than idiomatic phrases or clichés.