GED and HiSET language arts — organizing a paragraph

The editing section does not only ask whether a sentence is correct. A good deal of it asks whether a sentence is in the right place, whether it belongs in the paragraph at all, and whether four sentences could have been two. That is what this set is about: twelve short workplace paragraphs, sentences numbered, one question each about how the paragraph is built rather than how it is punctuated.

The material is the kind adults actually read at work — a clinic's check-in rule, a food bank's volunteer rota, a syllabus update for a night class, a memo about office supplies, a notice about a tenants' meeting. Each paragraph is printed in full inside its own question, so nothing depends on scrolling back.

What the questions ask. Which sentence carries the point of the paragraph. Which sentence wanders off it and should go — the coffee machine in the lobby, in an otherwise sober note about arriving fifteen minutes early. Where a new sentence belongs: a figure about pens and paper is evidence, and evidence goes with the claim it supports, not in front of a reader who has not yet been told why the number matters. What order three scrambled instructions go in, which is decided by the order the work actually happens. Which transition a gap needs — contrast where two statements pull against each other, sequence where one step follows another. How to fold two choppy sentences into one when both are details about the same meeting. Which revision removes a repeated phrase without quietly dropping a fact, and which cuts wordiness rather than rearranging it. Which sentence breaks a formal tone. What makes a closing sentence do work instead of restating the opening. And which detail a paragraph needs because it asserts something — productivity will improve — that it never supports.

The wrong answers are built to be tempting in the way real drafts are tempting: a revision that is shorter but has lost the opening hours, a conclusion that repeats the first line in new words, a comma placed between two complete sentences. Every explanation says why each one fails, because in editing questions that is the entire lesson.

Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with GED Testing Service, which owns the GED test, or with the HiSET program, and it is not a test centre. Nothing here reproduces any official test material.

• Pick out the sentence that carries a paragraph's point, and the one that wanders off it
• Place a new sentence where it does its work — evidence beside the claim it supports
• Put scrambled instructions into the order the work happens in
• Choose a transition by the relation it has to mark: contrast, sequence, or illustration
• Combine two short sentences into one without joining them with a comma
• Remove a repeated phrase without dropping any of the information with it
• Cut wordiness rather than rearrange it, and keep a formal notice in one register
• Write a closing sentence that adds the reason rather than restating the opening, and spot the claim a paragraph has left unsupported

Written for this exercise. From the bank: "(1) Books must be returned to the drop box. (2) The drop box is located outside the main entrance. (3) The drop box is available at any hour." Three sentences name the box three times to carry three facts — where books go, where the box is, when it can be used — and the revision has to keep all three while naming it once.