50 Writing Errors that Continue to Haunt Bloggers
There were times in my career and when I was going to college that I questioned my writing ability. Thankfully, blogging came around and (most) readers lowered their reading standards. Readers are thankfully scanning beyond errors with dangling participles, split infinitives, homonyms, transitive verbs, prepositions, relative pronouns, and just plain dumb spelling errors.
It wasn’t true in the past, but we’re all professional writers now. Not a day goes by that marketers have to write blog posts, press releases, whitepapers, case studies and email! You’re paid to write… are you making these common mistakes?
- Dangling Participles – happen when you write a sentence and a clause in the sentence is related to one that it wasn’t intended for.
- Homonyms – are words that are pronounced the same, spelled differently, and have different meanings. This is probably the most common writing error that I make.
- Split Infinitives – occur when an adverb is placed between the bare infinitive of a verb (ie. to boldly go.
- Transitive Verbs – a verb that requires a subject and an object.
- Prepositions – link nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence.
- Relative Pronouns – Relative pronouns are that, who, whom, whose, which, where, when, and why. They are used to join clauses to make a complex sentence.
- Spelling – spellcheck, anyone?
I want to improve my writing each time I sit at the keyboard. I want to learn these nuances of English. I’m fairly certain that I make an error in every other post… perhaps even more. I’d appreciate it if you kept me honest and leave a comment so I don’t embarrass myself as often. 🙂
Without further ado, here are the top 50 writing errors (excluding punctuation) that I’ve been guilty of or have identified through other sites. 5 Grammatical Errors that Make You Look Dumb by Brian Clark continues to inspire me!
50 Common Writing Errors
- Ad or add
- Adverse or Averse
- Advice or Advise
- Affect or Effect
- Alot or A lot
- Amoral or Immoral
- A part or Apart
- Assure or Ensure or Insure
- Allusion or Illusion
- Awhile or A while
- Centrifugal or Centripetal
- Cite or Site or Sight
- Collocated or Colocated
- Complement or Compliment
- Comprise or Compose
- Conscience or Conscious
- Council or Counsel
- Definitely
- Dependent or Dependant
- Desert or Dessert
- Disinterested or Uninterested
- Elicit or Illicit
- Emberass or Embarrass
- Entomology or Etymology
- Enquire or Inquire
- Ensure or Insure
- Every day or Everyday
- Farther or Further
- Flaunt or Flout
- Hear vs Here
- It’s or Its
- Know or Now
- Lay or Lie
- Lets or Let’s
- Loose or Lose
- Loser or Looser
- Militate or Mitigate
- Payed or Paid
- Practice or Practise
- Principle or Principal
- Regardless or Irrespective
- Stationery or Stationary
- Than or Then
- They’re, Their or There
- Would of, Should of, Could of or Would?ve, Should?ve, Could?ve
- Where or Were or We?re
- Which or That
- Who or Whom
- Your or You?re
- You or I or me
If you’d like to read further, I discovered one of the most comprehensive lists of writing errors at Paul Brians’ website.
I may even pick up the daily calendar: 2010 Common Errors in English Usage Daily Boxed Calendar. This is now on my wishlist!
I’m looking forward to reading the comments. Did I make an error in this post, too?