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| source |
I edited some stories for an
upcoming anthology and the state of grammar was quite similar. Seriously if one
gave me a dollar for every grammar mistake I could spot on the FB status
updates of people in my list I would make a million very easily.
These mistakes include messing
with tense, not using punctuation correctly, creating your own verbs (using
words which doesn't even exist) and what not, literally what not. And I am not
only talking about mistakes made by fellow Indian people but also by people
from US, UK and largely other English speaking countries.
Now by no way I am telling I am a
grammar Nazi or the I-know-every-bit-of-grammar but after having seen how the
state of affair is for a large population of people I can say I am in a better
place, or I at least try to correct myself when I am not. One major glitch that
is rampant these days is the auto correct that we see in our iOS and Android
devices. Most of the time it changes my words into something that it fancies
and if I have not checked it before posting it remains that way. Like the other
day I wrote ‘I don’t care if I’m spamming’ and auto correct on my iPhone
conveniently made it ‘I don’t career’… career really!!!
Today I am going to list down
some of the most common grammar mistakes that are made by even smart adults and
tricks to correct them. My post may contain some infographics and photos which
you may check. I am going to touch upon the most common mistakes only, to keep
the length of the post in check!
While writing this I remembered wrong
pronunciation of common words, maybe I’ll do a post on it later some time.
SPELLINGS
2day v r in da age f sms lingo or
da twitter lingo. And it feels insane when people start writing like this in
their blog posts or story submissions. I mean really is that how you write in
school too?? When we were in school we were threatened of negative marking for
every spelling mistake! Thank god for that our hold on spellings is still
strong and by the way everyone has a MS Word for that tiny help.
I before E except
after C
I have seen many spelling achieve as ‘acheive’, receive as ‘recieve’,
receipt as ‘reciet’ and so on.
This is the easiest rule to follow – I before E but except
before C.
So common words where you have I and E will always have
ie and not ei.
e.g. - achieve,
believe, bier, brief, hygiene, grief, thief, friend,
chief, fiend, patience,
pierce, priest etc.
And when you have a preceding C it’s the other way round – i.e. – “cei”
e.g. - ceiling, conceive, deceive, perceive, receipt, receive,
deceit, conceit
If you remember this
you will never make this common mistake.
TENSE
Are you tired of reading people write – ‘I didn’t said that’,
‘I didn’t went there’, ‘he didn’t listened to me’ and such other phrases? This
is one of the most common mistakes I faced while editing the stories.
Only Present after did not or didn’t
or even ‘to’
That’s again the rule – no past tense after did not or to. The
verb right after did or did not is always present.
e.g. – I didn’t
say that,
I didn’t go
there, he didn’t listen to
me, did he manage to get there, are you going to ask him
etc.
Get that THAT & AND off your
sentence
This one technically is not an error but it makes a read
very difficult. Try and reduce as much of ‘that’, ‘and’, ‘which’ in your
sentences while writing a prose, story, or even a simple blog post. It’s even
better to write shorter sentences than writing a sentence as long as a
paragraph with scores of ‘that’, ‘and’, and which!
The Good, The Better, The Best
I read in some ones FB post – this ‘makeup brand’ was more
better. Now what is that exactly? When you use comparative and superlative
adjectives you need not use anything else to make it even more
superduperlative!! (yeah that’s not a word). When you write bestest friend you
are not making your friendship supersonic.
For example:
long – longer – longest , short – shorter –
shortest,
bright – brighter – brightest, close – closer – closest
Punctuation
I'm going to leave you with some photos which will make it clear why a space, a comma and a full stop is important - in short why we need punctuation.
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| Did we miss a space somewhere? source |
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| Are we Hunting pedestrians? Where did the comma disappear? Source |
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| Poor Grandma, just about to be eaten! Source |
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| Apostrophes on sale? Use to heart's content!!! Source |
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| source |
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