Connie, relax, darling. You are a smart person who knows how to use language. They won't want you to name parts of speech, but they WILL want to know you can differentiate they're/there/their and effect/affect. Also that you know where to put commas. And that you can spot sentence fragments. You might also want to brush up on commonly misspelled words [link]

connie, I can promise you, in ten years of tech writing, it has never been important for me to be able to diagram a sentence.

Be prepared to rewrite something from passive voice to active voice. Scrappy's suggestions are also good. Make sure you can identify a comma splice.

they WILL want to know you can differentiate they're/there/their and effect/affect. Also that you know where to put commas. And that you can spot sentence fragments.

Ha. Fragments. 2 of them, right?

Yes, I'll need to brush up the misspelled words.

Make sure you can identify a comma splice.

OH, dear. A comma splice is supposed to be bad, right?

Scrappy, that spelling list is brilliant.

Now I want to know what kind of spelling teacher I had, because I grew up spelling judgment, judgement. It hurts to spell it the other way. Greene County, Pennsylvania, may be the borders of Appalachia, but it's still part of the American school system.

Yes, a comma splice is bad. It's using a comma to separate two complete sentences, rather than a period.

This is a comma splice, it is bad.

This is not a comma splice. Note the period. (Or the semi-colon.)

I marked that. I suspect I'll be referring to it as a reminder.

It's pretty simple, Connie. An independent clause is something which can stand alone as a complete sentence. If you have two independent clauses, then you use a semi-colon, or break them into two sentences. That's really all you need to remember.

Good lord, I actually felt a shudder at the words "independent clause." My English grades were always fun in school. "Why on earth do you have a D--oh, is that the week they did grammar?"

If I ever went on "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader," I'd definitely save a cheat for the grammar question.

What is the difference between transitive and intransitive anyway?

Jilli, I just read your latest column and I'm just infuriated with the school authorities for targeting goth kids in this manner. (Particularly the boy who's been forced to stop dressing like a Victorian. I mean, what possible leg do these people have to stand on? (Beyond "you should be sheep! We want you to be identical sheep! It makes us nervous when you aren't!")

As an educator, one of the things we're actively encouraging (at least at primary level!) is that people become independent thinkers, and that they have the courage to take risks and to be creative. Forcing people to merge into the crowd seems like the very antithesis of good teaching!