By Laurie Rozakis
In English Grammar for the Utterly Confused. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2003. PP. 77-93.
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Passive voice: The meeting was attended by the executive.
Active voice: The executive attended the meeting.
English has two voices: active and passive. A verb is active when the subject performs the action. A verb is passive when its action is performed upon the subject. The active voice is clearer and more concise than the passive voice.Even though the active voice is stronger than the passive voice, you should use the passive voice in these two situations:
- To avoid placing blame (“A mistake was made” rather than “You made a mistake.”)
- To avoid identifying the doer of the action (“The letter was sent” rather than “Nicole sent the letter.”)
12. Fragments (incomplete sentences)
Fragment: If you want to be clearly understood.
Correct: Don’t write sentence fragments if you want to be clearly understood.
Every sentence must have three things:
- A subject: the “doer” of the action. The subject will be a noun or pronoun.
- A verb: what the subject does.
- A complete thought.
The fragment in this example is missing a subject and a verb. As a result, the group of
words does not express a complete thought.
13. Run-ons (two sentences run together)
Run-on: Daddy longlegs spiders are more poisonous than black widows, daddy longlegs spiders cannot bite humans because their jaws won’t open wide enough.
Correct: Daddy longlegs spiders are more poisonous than black widows, but daddy longlegs spiders cannot bite humans because their jaws won’t open wide enough.
or Daddy longlegs spiders are more poisonous than black widows; however, daddy longlegs cannot bite humans because their jaws won’t open wide enough.
14. Missing letters
Here are five words that are frequently misspelled because the speaker drops a letter or syllable.
- Accidentally: The word has five syllables; drop one and accidentally becomes accidently.
- Accompaniment: The second a and the only i are the problems with accompaniment.
To remember the i, you might want to use this mnemonic: there’s a lot of animal in
accompaniment.
- Acreage: The e presents the spelling problem because it is rarely stressed in speech.
That’s how people end up with acrage. It’s also common for writers to misplace the e,as in acerage.
- Anecdote: Letters get dropped when writers mispronounce anecdote as anedote. Then there’s
antidote—a legitimate word, but the wrong one in context.
- Asked: This word gets mangled as ast or even axed.
This results in such curious spellings as askd, askt, and axst.
15. Extra letters
Because of errors in pronunciation, spellers often insert an unnecessary vowel between two letters. Here are some of the most commonly misspelled words:
- Athlete: Often mispronounced as athalete, resulting in that unnecessary a.
- Disastrous: The word ends up with disaster stuck in there: disasterous. What extra letter do you see?
- Grievous: Another common speech slip results in grieveous or grievious. No extra e ori, please.
- Hindrance: This word falls prey to the same problem as disastrous: add hinder to hindrance
and you get hinderance. Too many syllables!
- Lightning: The bolt of electricity on a stormy night is often mispronounced and thus misspelled as lightening. Now, lightening is a legitimate word; it means that something is getting less dark. Say each letter to help you spell the word you want.
16. Transposed letters
Mispronunciation can also result in scrambled letters. Here are some words especially prone to switched
letters.
aesthetic allegiance analysis analyze anonymous
auxiliary bureaucrat diaphragm entrepreneur gasoline
gauge gorgeous irrelevant khaki lingerie
mileage psychology resuscitate rhyme rhythm
17. Incorrect plurals
Remember that plural nouns name more than one person, place, or thing. There are regular plurals and irregular ones. The regular plurals rarely result in spelling errors, but irregular plurals often cause trouble. Keep regular and irregular plurals straight and you’ll eliminate a bunch of spelling errors. Below are some spelling rules to help you form the correct plurals.
18. Errors in confusing word pairs (such as weather/whether)
Some words in English have the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings,such as bay/bay
and beam/beam. We also have words with the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings, such as coarse/course or bridal/bridle. Distinguishing between these confusing words is crucial because it helps you write exactly what you mean.
19. Missing commas or extra commas
Incorrect: Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
Correct: Avoid commas that are not necessary.
Have you ever been advised to “add commas where you would take a breath”? Sometimes this advice works—but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s especially dangerous when you’ve gone over and over your writing. At that point, nothing looks correct. To avoid confusion and frustration, don’t wing it. Use these rules as you write to help you correctly punctuate your documents.
20. Missing or misused apostrophes
Incorrect: Save the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it where its’ not needed.
Correct: Save the apostrophe for its proper use and omit it where it’s not needed.
21. Misused exclamation marks
Incorrect: Of all U.S. presidents, none lived to be older than John Adams, who died at the age of 91!
Correct: Of all U.S. presidents, none lived to be older than John Adams, who died at the age of 91.
22. Misused semicolons
Incorrect: Use the semicolon correctly always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it is not suitable
23. Proper nouns not capitalized.
Incorrect: louisa adams, Wife of john quincy Adams, was the first (and only) foreignborn First Lady.
Correct: Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams, was the first (and only) foreignborn first lady.
24. Errors in titles
Incorrect: The Wind In The Willows
Correct: The Wind in the Willows
Capitalize the major words in titles of books, plays, movies, newspapers, and magazines.
- Do not capitalize the articles: a, an, the.
- Do not capitalize prepositions: at, by, for, of, in, up, on, so, on, to, etc.
- Do not capitalize conjunctions: and, as, but, if, or, nor.
25. Missing words
Incorrect: Proofread carefully to see if you have any words out.
Correct: Proofread carefully to see if you have left any words out.
This is a simple rule, but many people run out of time before they can proofread a document.
Always make the time to proofread your writing. And try to let your writing sit and
“cool off” for a few hours. The errors will become much more obvious and easier to isolate.
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