PSAT/SAT Writing Section Tip: Comparisons

Students often miss comparisons. What’s important to remember that when you make comparisons, you need to compare apples to apples and oranges and to oranges.

For example, if the sentence says that Mick Jagger's voice is better than Aretha Franklin, you know it's wrong because Mick Jagger's VOICE is being compared to Aretha Franklin, not Aretha Franklin's voice. You can't reasonably compare a voice and a person – you can only compare a voice to a voice.

Here's an example from the College Board's website:

After the music recital, Alexandra enjoyed listening (A) to her friend Mohammed's insightful interpretation, which she(B) thought was more sophisticated(C) than the other performers.(D)

No error (E)

The answer here is D. Alexandra enjoyed listening to an interpretation – which is, in this case, being compared to performers, not performers' interpretations. An interpretation is being compared to performers – in other words, apples are being compared to oranges. Here is a corrected version of the sentence:

After the music recital, Alexandra enjoyed listening (A) to her friend Mohammed's insightful interpretation, which she(B) thought was more sophisticated(C) than the other performers' interpretations.(D )

Or this:

After the music recital, Alexandra enjoyed listening (A) to her friend Mohammed's insightful interpretation, which she(B) thought was more sophisticated(C) than the other performers'. (D)

Note that in this second correction, the word interpretation is dropped. Often, the way this kind of question gets complicated is through the use of possessives and dropping a word. Possessives are indicated by the use of the apostrophe s ('s) or s apostrophe (s'). If you have a sentence than involves a comparison and a possessive, check it especially carefully. And always make sure that things are compared to things, people to people, and apples to apples.