During the editing stage of the writing process, students further improve their drafts and often prepare them for publishing by correcting conventions errors. Applying standard rules of the English language correctly helps the audience to easily understand the information by not having to interrupt their thinking to decide what the writer intended to say.

a class of function words that are followed by nouns, creating a prepositional phrase (e.g., by in “by the river”; at with “at school”)

Students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of the functions of prepositions and prepositional phrases and to use them effectively in their writing. Students should know how to identify the subject in a clause when a prepositional phrase appears between the subject and its verb and to use the appropriate subject-verb agreement. For example, in the sentence “The results of the lab test reveal some interesting findings,” the subject is results (plural) and not test (singular), so the correct verb is reveal not reveals. Students should review their drafts, evaluating the use of prepositional phrases for correctness, and make necessary changes to improve the quality of their writing.

standard rules of the English language, including written mechanics such as punctuation, capitalization, spelling, paragraphing, etc. and written/oral grammar such as parts of speech, word order, subject-verb agreement, and sentence structure

the grammatical state of a sentence when the subject and verb match in number (singular or plural) and/or person (first person, second person, or third person)