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1
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The mistake
everyone makes: Its and It's
- It's
means it is or it
has:
- It's
been raining all day. It's too late
now.
-
- Its
means belonging to it or of
it:
- It
was an old book - its pages were torn and
crumpled.
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2
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A Reminder:
There, Their and They're
- There
- refers to location: over
there
- Their
- means belonging to them: their
coats
- They're
- means they are: they're going
shopping.
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3
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Watch those
Spellings!
Keep a
dictionary to hand when writing an assignment.
There may be one contained in your word-processing
package, or you could access one online - try the
Collins
Cobuild Students'
Dictionary.
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4
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Checkers - False
Friends?
Beware
the spelling and grammar checkers on your PC -
their suggestions may not take account of what you
mean or actually want to say.
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5
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'Affect' and
'Effect':
Try not
to mix up the verbs 'Affect' and
'Effect':
- affect
means to influence something:
- the
day's tennis was affected by heavy
rain BUT the effects (noun)
of heavy rain were felt by the
crowd
- effect
means to accomplish something:
- the
prisoners effected an escape
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6
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'Disinterested'
and 'Uninterested'
- Disinterested
means impartial or neutral
- Uninterested
means not interested in
something
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7
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Watch your
Meaning:
'Slim,
of medium height and with sharp features, Mr.
Smith's technical skills are combined with sharp
leadership qualities' (Bryson 1984, p.44)
Bryson
says this is down to 'Dangling Modifiers': the
sentence implies that Mr. Smith's technical skills
are slim and of medium height with sharp features.
Errors of this type may be due to incomplete
sentences, but you don't have to be a grammatical
expert to spot them - check your meaning and watch
the position of words in your sentences.
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8
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Using
Parenthesis
Be
careful not to over-use parenthesis - dashes,
brackets and hyphens - in your writing.
But do
check your meaning - will the rest of your sentence
make sense without the parenthesis?
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9
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Prepositions on
the End
Generally,
it is good not to end a sentence with a
preposition, although sometimes this cannot be
helped, the famous example being:
- "This
is the kind of thing up with which I will
not put"
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10
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Collective
Consistency
When
using collective nouns (groups of persons or
things) be consistent with using either single or
plural in the rest of your sentence. For
example:
- WRONG:
the Government has decided that
they will implement the
policy
- RIGHT: the
Government has decided that it
will OR the Government have
decided that they will
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