The study, entitled “Syntactic Errors in Formal Letters Written by Seventh Grade
Students of SMP 2 Purwokerto”, aimed to describe the forms of syntactic errors
in the formal letters that were written by seventh grade students of SMP 2
Purwokerto. This was a qualitative descriptive research. The research data were
in the form of phrases and sentences that were thought to contain syntactic errors,
while the data source of this research was 40 formal letters written by seventh
grade students. The data were collected using observation method and then
analyzed using distributional method. The data analysis techniques used were
distributional technique, mark reading, interruption, modified element,
permutation, and substitution, while for presenting the results of data analysis
formal and informal methods were employed. The results indicated that syntactic
errors made by students were in 42 sentences of 40 letters; one phrase structure
error and five sentence errors. The first mentioned form of error came from word
order error, while the sentence errors come from 25 illogical sentences, 9
subjectless sentences, 1 sentence without predicate, 2 transitive verbs not followed
by objects, and 4 excessive conjunctions. The most common form of error made
was sentence error that made the sentences illogical.