Select the sentence that has a grammatical error.

Correct — A. The subject of option (a) is Indian force — singular in form and carrying no article — while the verb is are known, plural. Nothing in the sentence licenses that plural.

The repair the sentence itself asks for is the plural noun: Indian forces are known for their loyalty and integrity.

The giveaway is the possessive their later in the same sentence. The writer was thinking of a plural subject, so it is the noun that lost its -s.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  It is said that Joseph was not ready to go to war. — No error. It is said that plus a clause is the standard impersonal passive for reporting an unattributed claim, and the past tense was not ready sits correctly inside it.
• (c)
  It is impossible to wake Christine up in the morning. — No error. The anticipatory it stands in for the to-infinitive phrase, and wake Christine up is the ordinary separable order of the phrasal verb wake up.
• (d)
  Karl Marx was a renowned social scientist. — No error. The singular subject Karl Marx takes the singular past verb was, and a renowned is right because renowned begins with a consonant sound.

In this item the fault is planted in one word of one sentence, and it is most often agreement — a subject and a verb that disagree in number.

Read the subject first, then the verb. One care here: force is a collective noun, and British usage lets a collective take a plural verb when its members are meant individually — the jury are divided.

That licence does not rescue this sentence. The collective reading needs the article too — the Indian force — and what is printed carries neither the article nor the plural noun the verb is asking for.

The second clue is the pronoun. A later their, they or them tells you the number the writer intended, and which half of the mismatch to correct.

Key facts

• In ordinary usage a singular subject takes a singular verb: force is, forces are.
• British usage allows a collective noun such as jury, staff or committee a plural verb when its members are meant individually.
• A pronoun later in the sentence often reveals the number the writer intended for the subject.
• The stem asks for the sentence containing an error, so the sentences you cannot fault are evidence you have found the right one, not a gap in your reading.

Common traps

• Correcting are known to is known, when the sentence's own their asks for the plural noun instead
• Suspecting the reporting passive because it reads formally, though it is a standard structure
• Hunting for a vocabulary or spelling mistake in an item that tests grammar only

No directly related past PYQ was found.