It’s nearly impossible to find success without making (many) mistakes along the way. However, we don’t want to sit on the sidelines and see writers repeat the same mistakes over and over again. So here are 20 examples of common writing mistakes writers make along with tips on how to fix them.
The Top Twenty:
A Quick Guide to Troubleshooting Your Writing
1. Wrong Word
Wrong word errors take a number of forms. They may convey a slightly different meaning than you intend (compose instead of comprise) or a completely wrong meaning (prevaricate instead of procrastinate). They may also be as simple as a wrong preposition or other type of wrong word in an idiom.
Use your thesaurus and spell checker with care. If you select a word from a thesaurus without knowing its precise meaning or allow a spell checker to correct spelling automatically, you may make wrong-word errors. If prepositions and idioms are tricky for you, look up the standard usage.
2. Missing Comma after an Introductory Element
Use a comma after every introductory element—whether word, phrase or clause—to clarify where it ends and the rest of the sentence begins. When the introductory element is very short, you can skip the comma, but including it is never wrong.
3. Incomplete or Missing Documentation
Documentation practices vary from discipline to discipline. But in academic and research writing, it’s a good idea to always cite your sources: omitting documentation can result in charges of plagiarism. Cite each source you refer to in the text, following the guidelines of the documentation style you are using.
4. Vague Pronoun Reference
A pronoun (e.g., he, this, it) should refer clearly to the noun it replaces (called the antecedent). If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
5. Spelling
Even though technology now reviews much of our spelling for us, one of the top 20 most common errors is a spelling error. That’s because spell checkers cannot identify many misspellings, and are most likely to miss homonyms (e.g., presence/presents), compound words incorrectly spelled as separate words, and proper nouns, particularly names.
6. Mechanical Error with a Quotation
When we quote other writers, we bring their voices into our arguments. Quotation marks crucially show where their words end and our own begin.
7. Unnecessary Comma
We often have a choice about whether or not to use a comma. But if we add them to our sentences when and where they are not needed, then we may obscure rather than clarify our meaning.
8. Unnecessary or Missing Capitalization
Capitalize proper nouns and proper adjectives, the first words of sentences, and important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships. Do not capitalize most other words. When in doubt, check a dictionary.
9. Missing Word
If you read your work outloud before submitting it, you are more likely to notice omitted words. Be particularly careful not to omit words from quotations.
Soccer fans the globe rejoiced when the striker scored the second goal.
10. Faulty Sentence Structure
If a sentence starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind, it will confuse readers.
11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
A nonrestrictive phrase or clause provides additional information that is not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
David who loved to read history was the first to head to the British Library.
12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
Martin searched for a great horned owl. He takes photographs of all the birds he sights.
13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses. When the clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it’s)
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed’s phone) or an apostrophe alone (the girls’ bathroom). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Use its to mean belong to it; use it’s only when you mean it is or it has.
15. Fused (run-on) Sentence
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
16. Comma Splice
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and/or/because, or restructure the sentence.
17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Pronouns typically must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female, if appropriate) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. However, theycan be used to agree with a singular antecedent in order to use inclusive or gender-neutral language. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
18. Poorly Integrated Quotation
Quotations should be logically and smoothly integrated with the writing around them, the grammar of the quotation complementing the grammar of the neighboring prose. They usually need to be introduced (with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
A compound adjective requires a hyphen when it modifies a noun that follows it.
20. Sentence Fragment
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is presented as if it were a complete sentence. The following illustrate the ways sentence fragments can be created:
Without a subject
The American colonists resisted British taxation. And started the American Revolution.
No complete verb
The pink geranium blooming in its pot.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We visited the park. Where we threw the Frisbee.
Source: hume.stanford.edu
Related:
63 Grammar Rules for Writers – TUTORING YOU
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