Even after spending years of English coaching in schools, grammar is something that many people fail to get right. The problem is the same for all. Either there is an inability to coin words together into meaningful sentences, or phrases that seem verbally correct are actually gibberish and grammatically inappropriate. It is important to realize the importance of good grammar, as the latter is extremely useful in all kinds of education fields. Yes, it is true that grammar rules are tough and quite stringent, but half the battle is won when people understand their mistakes. Indeed, self-editing and spell check can reduce errors to a great extent. To defend a particular content and add an extra touch of polish and class to it, perfection in grammar is a must.
Common grammatical errors that are committed even by ace writers:
1. They’re vs. there vs. their: All these words are known as ‘similar sounding word’s’. It is easy to get confused between them, as people generally write as they speak, but once the difference of usage of each of these words are known, chances of mistakes are highly reduced.
2. Your and you’re: The difference between these two words is between possessing something and being something. For example: You’re cute, or ‘How is your mother’.
3. Its vs., It’s: This particular confusion predominates even the best of writers. Most of the blogs and posts undermine this mistake. While the word ‘its’ refers to possession ‘it’s is simply a contraction. To find such mistakes in the content, one can perform a control +F search. One can also browse through writing services forum to gain a better understanding of proper grammar usage.
4. Inappropriate comparisons: This mistake can be illustrated with the help of this sentence: The new Porsche is faster, stronger and better. Although the conjunction in this sentence is right in order, the comparison is incomplete. The object with which the new Porsche is being compared is unspecified. This will in turn leave the reader confused. Lining up the comparisons in the right way basically lends more clarity to the content.
5. Passive voice vs. active voice: Active voice any day lends more clarity to the content and captures reader’s attention, better than passive voice. The latter is used more often in sentences where the object of attention is placed towards the beginning of the sentence rather than the end. Passive writing actually makes less of a sense and isn’t much clear.
6. Improper punctuation marks: This again is a mistake that is made by even the best of writers. Proper allocations of commas, question marks and full stops are important as they allow the reader to judge the content in a better way. Certain things should be kept in mind; like conjunctions should not be preceded by commas and sentences should always be closed with full-stops. Half sentences are a common occurrence in poor quality content.
7. Possessive nouns: Possessive nouns generally have an apostrophe, but the main agenda is to install them in a proper manner. For plural nouns, the apostrophe should be added after the’s’, for example: bottles’.
8. Affect vs. effect: To refer to the act of changing, the verb ‘affect’ must be used, whereas while talking about the change, the word ‘effect’ must be used.
9. Spelling errors: Majority of people get confused between even commonly used synonyms and similar sounding words. A mere spell check can greatly eradicate these errors.
10. Me or I: It is important to realize that ‘I’ is the object of a sentence and cannot be used in objects.