Some Common Errors in Writing

[Paolo]

Peeves of mine. Save this page, and feel free to contribute:

There, their, they're - in order, they mean: a location - possessive - contraction for 'they are'.

"I put it over there."
"We went to their house."
"They're not home."

Its & It's - first one, possessive of the pronoun 'it'. Next, contraction for "it is".

"He grabbed its tail." - possessive.
"It's a nice day out." - contraction for "it is".

This is one case where you will not use the apostrophe to show possessive case.

Breath & Breathe - noun and verb

"I took a deep breath and held it."
"I can't breathe!"
You breathe with an extra 'e', my teacher told me.

Apostrophes - this thing '
See it? '
In English, it takes the place of dropped letters, as in contractions, or shows possession.

"That is Tommy's toy."
"That's Tommy's toy."

It is NOT used for simple plurals, unless they are possessive.
"There are two cats in the house." - no apostrophe on "cats".
"Those are the cats' toys." - this sentence is OK, for more than one cat.

To, too, and two - verb helper, in addition, a number.

Two = 2, the number.
too = meaning "also" or "in addition". Remember this - "There's too many O's in 'too', also."
to - the most common. "We're going to go to his house."

[Unregistered]

I know this sounds elitist but I didn't know most of those rules until I went to college. I'm not proposing that people that go to college are better in any way; merely that this country should place a higher priority on providing funding for EVERYONE to go to college. I know that makes us more like Denmark; it's a risk I'm willing to take.

-Christopher

[curious_guy]

Peeves of mine. Save this page, and feel free to contribute:

Its & It's - first one, possessive of the pronoun 'it'. Next, contraction for "it is".

"He grabbed its tail." - possessive.
"It's a nice day out." - contraction for "it is".

This is one case where you will not use the apostrophe to show possessive case.

It's can also mean "it has".

It's come to my attention that some of you are making errors.

Some of my peeves are:

The use of unique with modifiers. For example: "This is very unique."' Unique means "One of a kind" You would not write "This is very one of a kind."

Hopefully to mean "I hope" or "we hope".
Impacted to mean "hit" or "affected".
Importantly to mean "Important".

[transward]

Am I the only one to notice ... snip ... the more ignorant the grammar and spelling.

Transward

And what does what you said have to do with grammar and story submissions? Keep these opinions in the Political Forum, please, and don't answer that question here. - P.

[DeaconBlues]

Thankyou! Thankyou very much Paolo!

I tried to add to your reputation, but I have to spread some reputation points around a bit first.

On this subject, like most subjects, I feel a bit ambivalent. But I have to come down on the side for better grammar and correct spelling. I know, some writers have excellent stories to tell but lack the education and skill to tell those stories well. Fine example of this is Earnest Hemingway, LOUSEY writer but great stories to tell.

In the last decade, I perceive a horrible degeneration of our language, "web-speak" and cell phone text message expressions creeping into everyday letters and correspondence (e.g. "ne" in lieu of "any"). When I must read crap like "i hav 2go2 trafik klas bcuz i wuz speeding," I actually get a bit angry at the writer. Really, it is NOT that much more trouble is it to type out "I now must go to traffic school, I got caught speeding" instead of making your reader try to decode some ridiculous phonetic abbreviations.

[jemagirl]

Just don't... I mean just do not use contractions and you will avoid about one third of these problems. When in doubt throw it out.

[socky1965]

Just don't... I mean just do not use contractions and you will avoid about one third of these problems. When in doubt throw it out.

Does that also apply to unwanted genitalia?? LOL

[Unregistered]

Nil humanum a me alienum est

Where did you get this dreadful Latin? In addition to using an abaltive instead of an ethical dative, it doesn't even scan.

Nihil humanum alienum mihi est

[fredericlei]

The British spell words differently than Americans...

That should be something like “differently from the way Americans do.”

Nil humanum a me alienum est
Where did you get this dreadful Latin? In addition to using an abaltive instead of an ethical dative, it doesn't even scan.
Nihil humanum alienum mihi est

Well, the ablative seemed fine enough to Terentius; he wrote: “homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.” (Heaut. i. I. 75). Still, what would he know, eh?
I suppose you mean “ethic dative.”

[Uncle Flo]

Let us not descend to the level of taking pot shots at each other over small matters of grammar. There are enough grammatical errors for everyone to have one of his own. --FLO--

[fredericlei]

One common error which has spread in recent times from the US to all parts of the English-speaking world is lay for lie. Even supposedly educated people these days utter such solecisms as “I was laying down” instead of “I was lying down.”

Fewer and fewer people these days learn that the preterite for lie (when it means recline) is lay.

[plix]

Grammar is an interesting and complex subject. I am disappointed that my school does not offer a grammar class as most colleges do. I feel I would certainly benefit from it.

Even as an English major, I am one of the first to admit I make grammar mistakes on a regular basis in my writing, and even more so in my speaking. No one is going to be perfect all of the time, and it is possible to have an extensive knowledge of grammar while also making mistakes in grammar.

Grammar tends not to apply to speaking as much as it does to writing. Certainly there are rules that apply to speaking as well (e.g., "I is" would probably be frowned upon), but the rules are much more casual, and we tend to go off of what sounds natural and correct to us rather than following any strict set of rules.

When we start to worry about rules of grammar, I think we need to distinguish between issues of mechanics and issues of style. The former is the one that really counts. Those rules are the actual rules, whereas the latter is a matter of personal preference. Issues of style are the sort of thing that might piss off a few high school English teachers or college professors, but that have nothing gramatically incorrect about them.

I once had an entire college paper dinged gradewise because of a low "grammar" grade. Why the low grade? Issues of style. The professor went through my entire paper changing wording around because she did not like the way I worded things. There was nothing gramatically incorrect about anything she changed, but apparently my choices did not fit with her personal writing style. What made this even more funny was that she was not even an English professor - it was a nutrition class. Non-English professors need to just stay away from trying to grade grammar on papers because I have found that more often than not, they haven't a clue what they are doing.

Here are some examples of issues of style. There is nothing gramatically incorrect about them, but certain people will hold them as "peeves."

- "very unique" There is nothing gramatically incorrect about that, although it really is not necessary. Actually, the word "very" as a whole is pretty much an unncessary modifier, frowned upon in both professional/academic and creative writing. But many people use it, including me. The other things curious_guy mentioned are also issues of style, with the possible exception of substituting "Importantly" for "Important." Nothing wrong with having these peeves, but they are personal peeves (as most are).

- passive vs. active voice. Contrary to what your teachers told you, there is nothing technically incorrect with passive voice. It is simply a matter of style, and usually frowned upon in academic/creative writing (in profesional writing it can actually be an advantage).

- ending a sentence with a preposition. Again, nothing technically incorrect about it. Just a matter of style.

That's all I can think of for now, although there are numerous other examples.

AFAIK, everything else mentioned in this thread qualifies as issues of mechanics, meaning to violate these rules is a violation of grammar.

We don't want to forget "your" (posessive) and "you're" (contraction meaning you are). Getting these mixed upon is a common mistake (although usually the former is mistaken for the latter).

Don't even get me started on proper comma usage. That one is far too extensive to cover in a single post.

Finally, don't forget that when we speak of writing for the EA, we speak of creative writing. In creative writing the rules are quite different. They are often violated for creative purposes.

[Unregistered]

That should be something like “differently from the way Americans do.”



Well, the ablative seemed fine enough to Terentius; he wrote: “homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.” (Heaut. i. I. 75). Still, what would he know, eh?
I suppose you mean “ethic dative.”

No, he wrote "Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto" and the verb puto is different from the verb sum which requires an ethical dative Gloria (nom. sg) in excelsis (abl pl) Deo (dat sg). And Terence wasn't a native speaker anyway. Seneca "Nihil humanum alienum mihi est" was.

[Paolo]

Good point, CG. Any left out letters when forming a contraction.

[Kortpeel]

Peeves of mine. Save this page, and feel free to contribute:



Its & It's - first one, possessive of the pronoun 'it'. Next, contraction for "it is".

"He grabbed its tail." - possessive.
"It's a nice day out." - contraction for "it is".

Hi All,

Let me say how much I’m enjoying this thread. I am unable to resist joining in.

I had all those 'its - it’s' things drummed into me in my schooldays. I would say that I know them perfectly well but I am all too aware that I still get them wrong.

When engaged in the actual act of creative writing and things are going well it’s as if the words are queuing up in the mind and the bottleneck is the finger work involved in getting them into the computer. That’s when those ‘common writing mistakes’ happen. It seems to me that there is some conflict between assembling the words (the creative part) and the mechanical part of getting the grammar right.

The way round it is to get the story down, leave it for a couple of weeks or so, and then proof read it. I often cringe in embarrassment at the mistakes I pick up, and even then I still miss some.

On style, I’d say it comes with practice. One tip is to go through your work and eliminate unnecessary words. Usually you can delete every ‘very,’ ‘rather’ and ‘quite’ straight away. A critical re-read will always let you find other unnecessary words too. The effect of this is to make the story ‘sharper’ like a photograph which has been properly focussed.

Always remember to eschew obfuscation - keep it simple instead. Is the story easy to read or does the reader have to skip back to get your meaning?

Finally my own contribution to common errors: if something is okay it is ‘all right,’ not ‘alright.’ Remember ‘all right,’ like damnyankees, are two words.

Regards

Kortpeel