Content Marketing

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

  1. Ad or add
  2. Adverse or Averse
  3. Advice or Advise
  4. Affect or Effect
  5. Alot or A lot
  6. Amoral or Immoral
  7. A part or Apart
  8. Assure or Ensure or Insure
  9. Allusion or Illusion
  10. Awhile or A while
  11. Centrifugal or Centripetal
  12. Cite or Site or Sight
  13. Collocated or Colocated
  14. Complement or Compliment
  15. Comprise or Compose
  16. Conscience or Conscious
  17. Council or Counsel
  18. Definitely
  19. Dependent or Dependant
  20. Desert or Dessert
  21. Disinterested or Uninterested
  22. Elicit or Illicit
  23. Emberass or Embarrass
  24. Entomology or Etymology
  25. Enquire or Inquire
  26. Ensure or Insure
  27. Every day or Everyday
  28. Farther or Further
  29. Flaunt or Flout
  30. Hear vs Here
  31. It’s or Its
  32. Know or Now
  33. Lay or Lie
  34. Lets or Let’s
  35. Loose or Lose
  36. Loser or Looser
  37. Militate or Mitigate
  38. Payed or Paid
  39. Practice or Practise
  40. Principle or Principal
  41. Regardless or Irrespective
  42. Stationery or Stationary
  43. Than or Then
  44. They’re, Their or There
  45. Would of, Should of, Could of or Would?ve, Should?ve, Could?ve
  46. Where or Were or We?re
  47. Which or That
  48. Who or Whom
  49. Your or You?re
  50. You or I or me

2010CalendarSm.jpgIf 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?

Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is CMO of OpenINSIGHTS and the founder of the Martech Zone. Douglas has helped dozens of successful MarTech startups, has assisted in the due diligence of over $5 bil in Martech acquisitions and investments, and continues to assist companies in implementing and automating their sales and marketing strategies. Douglas is an internationally recognized digital transformation and MarTech expert and speaker. Douglas is also a published author of a Dummie's guide and a business leadership book.

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