***Common Writing Mistakes
Sept 6, 2010 1:15:19 GMT -5
Post by ᕙʕ•ᴥ•ʔᕗ on Sept 6, 2010 1:15:19 GMT -5
Ooh, this is where I get to put on my teacher-like glasses and pull out my red pen. Yep, that’s right. This is the part where I become a maniac and start yelling at you because you decided to write “your” instead of “you’re”. It’s a common mistake, but you still wouldn’t submit this to an English teacher intentionally, right? Same goes for when you post. Believe it or not, the staff actually does look through your posts. If you make a mistake every once in a while in your posts, don’t worry; it’s not the end of the world. But when your post is spotted with usage/grammar/punctuation mistakes, you might notice that there is a staff member ready to blow the top of his/her head off. Not a pretty image.
The point of this guide is to go over some of the common writing mistakes and the correct usage for each. Because believe it or not, it’s a pretty dang important thing to know.
1 – It’s vs. Its
This one gets me every single time. Hopefully, you won’t have an angry staff member on your back, yelling at you for making this mistake. Good news is 99.9% of the population will probably make this mistake at least once in their life. That is how common this writing mistake is. So let’s go over it right now!
Example: “It’s time to eat dinner.”
When you read this, what do you see? Hopefully you read this example as, “It is time to eat dinner.” See, contractions can be tricky little things, always confusing writers. Now that you know “It’s” is just really short for “It is”, let’s go over the other example.
Example: “Its wing was broken.”
What does this mean? Definitely not “It is”. Can you imagine trying to say, “It is wing was broken”? I cringe just from typing it. >.> “Its” is used for possession. In relation to the example, one could assume that the “It” is something that has a wing. But it is more important to note that the wing belongs to that something. Look at what an incorrect usage does.
Example: “It’s wing was broken.”
Let’s read this together. “It is wing was broken.” Yes, this is the very same example I used earlier. Now what’s wrong with this? First off, you have two verbs and only one subject. The wing was what was broken so what’s with the “it”? Just by reading this, you know that there is something wrong. Let’s try the first example.
Example: “Its time to eat dinner.”
By reading this, the reader will think that someone has possessed time. Could you imagine the chaos that would dominate if someone actually did?
To put in short: To correct this common mistake, just read it aloud. See if it makes sense when you say it. Play around a bit and see if it really does need that apostrophe or not.
2 – Cannot vs. Can not
Point of clarification: The latter should never be used. Why? Because it doesn’t even exist in the English language! Okay, maybe with some manipulation it can, but when you are trying to say that Person A does not have the ability to do Action A, you should never use “can not”. If you do, I shall chase you down the street with a fireplace poker. Is that incentive enough?
3 – You’re vs. Your
Another one that gets me every single time. This is probably the second most common mistake I’ve ever seen in my seventeen years of going through essays, poems, RP posts, and fanfics. And it’s the one that ticks me off the most. Ready?
The proper usage for “You’re”: When you read this, what do you notice? It’s a contraction (that’s what the little apostrophe is doing up there). “You’re” is short for “You are”. Remember this; it is going to very important in this section. Notice that “You’re” already includes a subject and verb. I’ll explain the importance after I go through the proper usage of “Your”.
The proper usage for “Your”: Possession. For some odd reason, the more common mistakes involve a conflict between possession and contractions. Strange, if you ask me. Anywho, let’s continue forward. When you use “Your”, you are indicating someone else’s possession.
Okay, example time!
Example: “You’re going to die.”
Now besides the bluntness of that statement, what can you see? If you read it aloud (and expand the contraction), it becomes “You are going to die.” Still not a pleasant thing to say but did you notice how the contraction already gives you a subject and verb? Hmm, let’s look at an example of it being misused.
Example: “You’re bird is squawking at me.”
Ouch. My heart is starting to bleed. Okay, maybe not really, but at least you know how I react to this type of mistake. Let’s read this with expanding the contraction. “You are bird is squawking at me.” In a way, it is very similar to the “It’s vs. its” section. If you read through it, it just doesn’t sound right. Who even says “You are bird”? Even I would have the sense to add in an article if it was just those three words. The correct way to write this would be
Example: “Your bird is squawking at me.”
Why? Because you are talking about someone else’s bird, not saying that they are a bird that is squawking (though if you are, I guess it would be okay after you add in some articles).
Does this section make sense? Okay, let’s move on.
4 – Capitol vs. Capital
You would think that after reading The Hunger Games front to back and back to front, the writer would know the difference between Capitol and Capital. Guess not. This is also a fairly common mistake and therefore deserves a place on this list. That along with the fact that this is a Hunger Games RPG makes it very important for me to go over this.
So where does the governing body of Panem live? Not in the Capital, that’s for sure. They live in the Capitol. With an “O”. Try not to forget that. =) Technically, a capitol is a building that houses a state legislature. But for the sake of this site, just remember that the Capitol is the name of the place where all the rich, wealthy residents live with their funny accents and huge amounts of food.
Once I tell you what the meaning of “capital” is, you might wonder why Suzanne Collins didn’t call the Capitol the Capital. The meaning of capital is the city or town where the official governing body rests. Mm, definitely sounds more fitting for the Capitol right? Well, don’t go changing facts from the book! XD That would be horrible. So yes, as much as you have an instinct to write “Capital”, that’s not where the residents are all wacky. It would be the Capitol.
5 – They’re vs. Their vs. There
Oh my freaking Ripred. Definitely a common mistake everyone needs to know about. Let’s go through this step-by-step while I sip on my orange juice.
They’re: What is something you notice here? If you mentioned “apostrophe” or “contraction”, you get a cookie! If you had no idea what I was talking about, that’s okay. This is what the guide’s for. As you can see, “They’re” means “They are”. It is a contraction of those two words. Here’s an example of the usage of “They’re”.
Example: “They’re going to be arriving any minute now!”
Their: You would use “their” for possession. Let’s take…your neighbour’s dog (I don’t care if they actually have a dog or not, this is a lesson! XD). You are complaining to your friend about how its barking kept you up all night. Your friend would reply with:
“Their dog sounds so annoying!”
Possession. =) It is your neighbour’s dog or their dog.
There: You would typically point out nouns (people/places/things) in terms of placement with this.
Example: “Look over there!”
Example: “The person you are looking for is sitting there.”
Example: “There you are!”
You would not say “There dog is annoying” because it wouldn’t make sense. The dog is not being pointed out in a certain direction or place. It might look ridiculous now but you would be surprised how many people make this mistake.
6 – Subject-verb agreement
For this section, you’ll probably be thinking, Dee, what are you doing? Who is stupid enough to actually mess up on this? You would be surprised. Of course, if you are an advanced RP-er, you probably are allowed to think that, but just know that this is indeed a pretty common mistake.
Let’s kick it off with an example: “Bob were happy.”
Chances are you already see the fault in this example. “Were” is used for plural subjects, while Bob is only a singular subject. Time to fix that up!
Edit: “Bob was happy.”
It flows so much better off the tongue, and it reads like it’s supposed to. Simple enough, right? Shall we move on to the more complicated ones?
Example: “The group of children ____ behind the counter. (hide; present)”
The first instinct of a writer would be to insert “hide” because “children” is plural. But that’s not actually the subject of the sentence. The subject of the sentence is “group of children”. Because group is a collective noun, you would insert “hides” instead of “hide”.
Now what if the subject were to hide behind a long list of unnecessary words?
Example: “Acker, the boy who had survived everything, flocked around by friends, loaded with money, ____ sad and lonely. (be; past)”
Eep! Look at all of those words. But what if you took out all of the things in the comma? The sentence would simply be “Acker ___ sad and lonely.” What would you put in the blank if that were the case? You would insert “was” as it is the singular form of be in the past tense.
7 – Homophones in general
Before I launch into this section, be clear to note that this section is on homophones which are words that sound alike. We’ve already gone over some specific issues in the previous sections, but I think it’s necessary to have a heads-up for these words.
A great reference site for homophones that are commonly mistaken is ESLDesk. There is no better resource than one that is targeted for the basics of learning English.
8 – Apostrophes
This is one I usually have a problem with as well, so let’s use a reference guide (or two) for this.
Resource 1: This source is a simple apostrophe guide that goes through the rules of the apostrophe usage. Complete with examples!
Resource 2: I absolutely love Purdue Owl so if you see me gushing about it here, well…I’m sorry.So, Purdue Owl is actually a more brief run-through but it’s detailed as it goes through the three uses of the apostrophe.
Sorry, I couldn’t give you any of my knowledge on apostrophes, but these guides do a much better job going through the uses of the apostrophe than I ever could.
9 – Comma/Period Usage
Very very necessary for your posts. Have you ever read a post where you go through, and then all of a sudden, you have no clue what just happened? Or better yet, all the words in a sentence start to blur, and you are still trying to figure out what was just said? Let’s go through this.
Example: “Dee decided to write a very fail post to prove that she could and so the readers of her guide could be amused by her horrible usage of commas or lack thereof and she felt all offended but it didn’t matter since she decided to write it and now staff members are going to be very angry and she will be in trouble.”
O.O Can you imagine the type of trouble Dee will be in if an RP tutor reads that post? Oh wait…I’m Dee, and most likely an RP tutor did read that post. T.T Here, let’s fix it before they kick me off the site.
Edit: “Dee decided to write a very fail post to prove that she could, and so the readers of her guide could be amused by her horrible usage of commas or lack thereof, and she felt all offended, but it didn’t matter since she decided to write it, and now staff members are going to be very angry, and she will be in trouble.”
Yeah, I’d still get kicked out for that. Even by adding commas, it just creates one long run-on sentence. Hmm, what if we substituted the commas with periods?
Edit again:”Dee decided to write a very fail post to prove that she could. And so the readers of her guide could be amused by her horrible usage of commas or lack thereof. And she felt all offended but it didn’t matter since she decided to write it. And now staff members are going to be very angry. And she will be in trouble.”
If anything, that was worse than with the commas. First off, you typically wouldn’t start a sentence with a conjunction. Second, the sentence looks all choppy! Let’s take out the “and”s and see what happens.
Edit once again: “Dee decided to write a very fail post to prove that she could. So the readers of her guide could be amused by her horrible usage of commas or lack thereof. She felt all offended but it didn’t matter since she decided to write it. Now staff members are going to be very angry. She will be in trouble.”
Mm, better but still very choppy. By using our knowledge of periods and commas, I’m going to make one last edit and hope that it finally flows.
Last edit: “Dee decided to write a very fail post to prove that she could, and so the readers of her guide could be amused by her horrible usage of commas or lack thereof. She felt all offended but it didn’t matter since she decided to write it. Now staff members are going to be very angry, and she will be in trouble.”
Not the best post I could ever write, but it’s definitely much better than what I wrote in my first few examples. So these punctuation marks can be your best friend (and they will when you’re posting), so take care to use them appropriately. Wouldn’t want to make your best friend feel like he/she is being used.
I’ll leave you this section with a wonderful image to prove to you that commas might be needed in some situations.
Example: “Let’s eat Grandpa!”
-cringes- Unless you’re into cannibalism, I would advise you to not write that. Even if Grandpa is tasty, I highly doubt you will be eating him anytime soon. Perhaps we should fix it before Grandpa starts yelling at us for gnawing on his arm? O.o
Edit: “Let’s eat, Grandpa!”
Now you sound more like an affectionate grandchild rather than the bloodthirsty grandchild who wants to dine on his/her grandfather. See the difference a comma can make?
10 – Pronoun-Antecedent
First off, what is a pronoun? A pronoun is something that describes the noun, shockingly enough. Let’s take “she”. Now if you were talking about your math teacher (who is female if you couldn’t see where I was going with this), after you introduce your math teacher as Ms. Wackalirimda, you would say “she”.
Example: “Ms. Wackalirimda is the most awesome teacher in the world! She lets us play around all day.”
What I have underlined is the pronoun. Did you notice how although the word itself is not really specific, you know that I’m talking about Ms. Wackalirimda? Time to talk about Ms. Wackalirimda.
Ms. Wackalirimda is the antecedent to “her”. It is what the pronoun is describing. Does that make any sense? I’ll give you another example and see if I can show you (if I’m in a good enough mood, I’ll even draw you a little graph).
Example: “The cool waves brushed past Oscar as they moved in towards the shore. They then proceeded to move back out, leaving Oscar alone in the sand.”
First, let’s try to find out what the pronoun is. Oh look! There it is:
Example: “The cool waves brushed past Oscar as they moved in towards the shore. They then proceeded to move back out, leaving Oscar alone in the sand.”
Now that we have identified what the pronouns are, can we figure out what “they” is describing? It surely is not Oscar as Oscar is a single noun. If we let ourselves examine the sentence completely, we will see that “waves” is another candidate for being the antecedent of “they”. Does it make sense? Why yes it does! Now we know that the antecedent for “they” in this example is “waves”. Simple as that.
However, some people have the tendency to use the wrong pronoun. Le gasp! Should I show you an example?
Example: “Each person was able to choose their own backpack.”
I’m pretty sure you noticed it this time around, but believe me when I say that this is one of the most common mistakes in the writing world. Unless you are a careful reader, chances are you skipped over this during your revision. So what exactly is wrong with it? Well, I used a singular antecedent “each person” and paired it off with a plural pronoun “their”. The one (and pretty much only) way to correct this is by matching the antecedent with the pronoun.
Edit: “Each person was able to choose his own backpack.”
But what happened to all the girls, you might say? As sexist as the edit was, it was the grammatically correct way to write that sentence. My advice? Go for the rules, then worry about the social implications behind them. And if you really are a hardcore feminist, then change “his” to “her”. As long as you keep the subject and verb both singular or both plural, your writing will be fine.
11 – Anyways
This mistake is so common, I had to learn about it from a freshman during my junior year. And she was one wise freshman, because her reasoning was correct: “anyways” is not a word. You cannot have multiple “ways” when you use the word “any”. Singular and singular, that is how the world functions.
I know, I know; this is simply something that just comes to you. Even if you know about it, it will slip out anyway. But acknowledging it and being sure to use it in practice will help you break this horrible habit (and perhaps make this one of the not-common writing mistakes). Whenever you say the word, think about it. Does it make sense? Are you really choosing multiple ways?
Ending Note:
These are common writing mistakes. That means that as much as you fancy yourself to be the best writer in the world, chances are you’re going to make one of these mistakes some time or another. Heck, I make these mistakes a lot, and I’m writing this guide. However, if you are a routine offender, then maybe this guide is something you would like to refer to every now and then. At least it’ll give you what you need to know for the basics of RP-ing.
