MISTAKES (Created for our English students--if you have suggestions drop us an email, it will prove the fact that we need help and lend some irony to the title!)


Version 1.01

1. Subject-Verb agreement -- problems happen when the subject is singular (man) and the verb is plural (jump), or when the subject is plural (boys) and the verb is singular (sings). To correct this problem, make sure both are singular (man jumps) or plural (boys sing).

Want more help? Refer to http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/eslsubverb.html .

2. Article problems -- You have four choices: “a,” “an,” “the,” and no article at all.

Use no article when speaking or writing about things in a general sense: I like music.
Use no article when speaking or writing about places with proper nouns: We live in Florida.
(Exceptions: oceans, seas, rivers--but not lakes--and the United States, the Russian Federation, etc.)
Use no article when speaking or writing about days of the week, months, hours, holidays: We celebrate Thanksgiving.


Remember to put “a” before consonants sounds and “an” before vowel sounds, if an article is needed at all.

Do not use “the” before a noun when you mean the noun in a general or generic sense. “The violence cannot solve the conflicts.” should be, “Violence cannot solve conflicts.”

Want further help? See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/eslart.html .
OR
http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/articlestext.htm
OR
http://esl.about.com/od/beginningenglish/ig/Basic-English/Articles.htm

3. Wrong pronoun for how it is used -- When a pronoun is used as the subject (does action), it must be in subjective case. “Her asked me.” should be, “She asked me.”

Also, when it is used as the object (receives the action), it should be in objective case. So, “She likes I.” should be, “She likes me.”

See http://www.eflnet.com/tutorials/subobjpronouns.php for more help.

4. Capitalization -- Proper nouns (the names of specific people, cities, countries, months, street names, names of days, titles of people (Dr., Ms., Mr., Sir, Monk, titles of books or movies or magazines, etc.) should be capitalized. So Ajahn Chaa should be capitalized because it is the title and then name of a specific person.

The first word of every sentence should be capitalized. “I” (the pronoun) is alway capitalized.

Another problem is capitalizing words that do not need to be capitalized. So, if you wrote about all the ajahns in Thailand, the same word would not be capitalized because you are not writing about one specific person. The same would be true about the kings of Thailand and King Rama III. All proper nouns are capitalized. Common nouns are not capitalized.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/592/01/

5. Spelling -- These problems should be fewer because of computers. If your computer word processing program indicates a word is misspelled, make sure it is correct by checking it in a dictionary. Computers will not indicate of is a problem when you meant if, because of is spelled correctly, but it is still the wrong word. So, read your work carefully before you ask us to read it!

6. Run-on sentences -- These happen when you put together several sentences with a conjunction like and. This is an example and it shouldn't happen and it can be annoying and it also is difficult to read and we want you to correct it so it shouldn't happen and if it does we will put a "6" on your paper.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_frag.html

7. Parallelism -- Lack of Parallelism -- This error comes up frequently. It is best shown by example.
NOT Parallel: Jim likes fishing, to listen to music, and to dance.
Parallel: Jim likes to fish, to listen to music, and to dance.
Parallel: Jim likes fishing, listening to music, and dancing.
NOT Parallel: His employer fired him because he was often late to work, maintained his work area in a messy way, and he fights with others.
Parallel: His employer fired him because he was often late to work, he maintained his work area in a messy way, and he fought with others.
NOT Parallel: I value these: fidelity, charity, and telling the truth.
Parallel: I value these: fidelity, charity, and honesty.
More? See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/623/01/
http://www.towson.edu/ows/parallelism.htm
8. Consistent tense -- If you start using past tense in a paper, keep using past tense unless there is a reason to change it. Verb tense indicates time. If you change the tense you will tell the reader that the time has changed. If you change the time without a good reason, you will confuse the reader. Good writing is about being clear, not about being confusing.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_tensec.html

9. Unclear -- This is used when the meaning of the sentence could not be determined. We tried to figure out what you meant, but we couldn't.

10. Sentence Fragments -- Every sentence must have a subject and a verb. When it lack one or the other, it is a sentence fragment. While John was on a trip in the south of Italy. is a sentence fragment. It is not a complete idea. What happened while he was on his trip in Italy? We don't know. If you have a fragment, it needs to be completed to be a sentence. While John was on a trip in the south of Italy his cat ate his house. is a complete (but silly) sentence.

Note: the one word sentence “Jump!” is not a fragment. The subject is not stated, but is [You]. We put [brackets] around the subject because it is implied--that means it is understood to be there, but it is not written or said.

11. Incorrect use of commas -- Commas are sometimes difficult. When you want your reader to pause, you usually put a comma there. If you aren't certain if a comma is needed, don't put one there. If the sentence is confusing unless one needs to pause at that point, then add a comma.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_comma.html http://essayinfo.com/sguides/comma.php

12. Incorrect use of semicolon (;) or colon (:) -- People often use these two kinds of punctuation incorrectly. They have specific uses, shown at these links: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_overvw.html or http://essayinfo.com/sguides/semicolon.php and http://essayinfo.com/sguides/colon.php

13. Incorrect number -- This problem happens when a person uses a plural noun where a singular noun is needed or is customary, or vice versa. “Three soldiers were missing in actions.” is incorrect because it is customary to say, “missing in action.” So it should be, “Three soldiers were missing in action.”
14. Missing word(s) -- Here it appears that a word has been left out. Often, some form of the verb "to be" is omitted by a person unfamiliar with English, but it may be some other word, too.

15. Unnecessary helping verb -- Sometimes a helping verb is completely unnecessary, and it should be removed. “We should go, even if it might mean more expense.” should really be, “We should go, even if it means more expense.” Here "might" serves no purpose.

16. Wrong word -- This error means you used a noun for a verb, a verb for a noun, an adjective for an adverb, or an adverb for an adjective, or created some other inappropriate substitution.

17. Incorrect form of the verb -- Here you used the wrong form of the verb. You may have a problem with the tense of the verb, or you may have a problem with the person (first person is the one speaking, second is the person spoken to, and third is everyone else), or some other verb form issue.

18. Redundant word or words -- Try not to say the same thing twice. Of course, most of us make this mistake. For example, whenever we say “ATM machine.” ATM means “Automatic Teller Machine” which makes ATM Machine mean Automatic Teller Machine Machine. “Free gift,” “added bonus,” and “advance warning,” are all examples of redundancies

(See where I got these at http://www.karlonia.com/2008/11/15/english-grammar-avoid-redundant-words-phrases/ ) Try to keep them out of your writing.

19. Problems with prepositions --You may have used “to” when you should have used “in,” or “in” instead of “on,” etc.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/prepositions.htm

20. Problems with quotations -- quote marks usually mean your are repeating the exact words someone else said. There are rules for how they are to be written, whether periods, commas, and other punctuation is to be inside or outside the quote marks. They cause many people problems.

See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/

21. Unnecessary words -- One or more of the words here are not needed. Your writing would be better if these words were removed.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_concise.html

22. Number problems -- We usually write out numbers at or below nine. Numbers greater than nine, like 11 or 9,321 are written numerically. When a number starts the sentence, it is always written out.
http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp

23. Question mark (?) or exclamation point (!) issues -- Question marks come at the end of questions. “Why did this happen?” is a question and should end with a question mark. “We don’t know why this happened.” is not a question, it is stated as a fact, so no question mark here would be correct.
More? See http://www.whitesmoke.com/punctuation-question-mark.html
http://www.englishclub.com/writing/punctuation-exclamation-mark.htm

24. Wrong word order -- This means you words are in the wrong place. For example: “wine red” instead of “red wine.”

25. Pronoun with an uncertain antecedent -- Here is an example: Jim and Bill are friends. He is an artist. But, who is an artist? We can’t tell. Why, because the pronoun he, like almost all pronouns, has an antecedent, or word that it stands for. The word in this example is either “Bill” or “Jim.” But we aren’t sure which. Your example may be more complex, but it is essentially the same problem.
[Last rewritten--new (and improved!) mistakes--December 3, 2009.]