85% of professional editors report that the most common grammar mistakes they encounter involve subject-verb agreement errors.
Grammar is essential to effective communication for writers, authors, and anyone involved with publishing. Wrongly constructed sentences or misspelled phrases can easily undermine the clarity and credibility of your message or work. While editing, fixing common grammar errors helps ensure future drafts stand out as much as possible. This blog post offers guidance on understanding and correcting common errors for successful communication in future writing projects.
Understanding Grammar Mistakes and Their Impact
Grammar errors can sneak into writing without you knowing, leaving an impactful statement without its intended message despite your best intentions. Common types of errors include subject-verb disagreement, run-on sentences, and misplaced modifiers that often escape our notice despite significantly impacting the text’s readability and professionalism.
Authors, publishers, and writers know that editing is one of the best ways to enhance the quality of their writing. Book editing services provide invaluable assistance for this process, but understanding core mistakes yourself will bring greater accuracy and confidence to your writing.
Common Grammar Mistakes
Let’s delve deeper into some of the most commonly made grammar errors that writers face.
Subject-Verb Agreement Errors
Subject-verb agreement remains one of the cornerstones of grammar, yet many authors find it challenging. While its rules seem straightforward—singular subjects need singular verbs while plural subjects require plural ones—in practice, this becomes much more challenging when complex subjects such as collective nouns and compound topics are involved.
By contrast, it’s easy to make errors such as “The team is playing well.” Here, “team” is singular and should, therefore, be used as “is,” not “are.” So, the correct sentence would read as: “The team is playing well.”
“The most important thing in writing is to avoid repeating yourself or using confusing sentence structures.”
Run-On Sentences
A run-on sentence consists of two independent clauses joined with no punctuation or conjunctions. This makes your writing hard for readers to understand and results in more incomprehensible text to readers. Perhaps they make reading harder to understand for both yourself and them. Run-on sentences often appear like this: “She went to the store she bought groceries”. In this sentence, two independent clauses attempt to be linked without proper punctuation or conjunctions being introduced; to correct it, split up or connect these independent clauses separately: “She went to the store she bought groceries”. To address this error in sentence writing:
“Good writing is not just about putting words together, it’s about making those words work in harmony.”
Sentence Fragments
A sentence fragment is any incomplete sentence without its subject and verb. These fragments can often be overlooked when writing quickly or during the drafting phase; however, they impede both flow and meaning in writing.
“Running Down the street” is incomplete because it lacks a subject. To make this more complete, consider changing it to “She was running down the street” to complete your thought with the subject tense: she is.
“Every sentence should serve a purpose—fragmented sentences serve none.”
Misplaced Modifiers
Misplaced modifiers refer to words or phrases that do not sit perfectly alongside those they modify, leading to either confusion or comedic mishaps. This mismatch often leads to unexpected results that cause hilarious miscommunication between the parties involved.
Example: She almost drove the car for five hours would indicate that it isn’t her who actually almost drove five hours; rather, it is implied that they almost did drive it for that duration—the correct sentence would read as follows: “She almost drove it for almost five hours.”
“Clarity in writing is all about ensuring every word is in its rightful place.”
Incorrect Pronoun Usage
Pronouns serve to replace nouns in sentences; however, incorrect pronoun usage can create havoc for readers and obscure meaning. One common error involves pronouns not matching numbers or genders with those they replace – something many readers mistake for normal use of pronouns.
As “each of the students must submit their paper by Friday” is using “their” incorrectly, this sentence should read as: Each of the students must hand in his or her paper by Friday.”
Inconsistent Tense Usage
Inconsistency in Tense Usage Switching tenses throughout a piece will confuse and distract readers; keeping to one tense in each sentence helps maintain coherence in writing and helps create clarity and ease for reading comprehension.
An example of shifting in tense is: “She was walking down the street when she saw a dog.” To maintain consistency and clarity of meaning, this sentence should read as: “She was walking when she saw a dog.”
“Consistency is key when writing, as this allows the reader to easily follow your lines of argument.”
Fixing Common Grammar Mistakes
Now that we understand some common grammar errors let’s focus on fixing them in our writing.
Correcting Subject-Verb Agreement
To correct subject-verb agreement errors, review each sentence closely to ensure the subject and verb match in number. If in doubt, try isolating each part to see if they agree; when dealing with collective nouns, remember they often count as singular items.
Fixing Run-on Sentences
Breaking apart run-on sentences is easy: simply separate independent clauses using punctuation or conjunctions such as periods or semicolons—even “and” and “but” can work to join clauses properly.
Completing Sentence Fragments
When encountering a sentence fragment, ask yourself whether its subject and verb have been included; otherwise, revise to turn it into a complete sentence.
Placement of Modifiers
To avoid misplaced modifiers and ensure clarity in writing, they are placed directly adjacent to the target word or phrase they modify. This will avoid confusion and ensure clarity within your writing.
Correct Pronoun Usage
Make sure that pronouns match their antecedents both in number and gender for maximum clarity. This will avoid awkward phrasing and maintain clarity. It will also avoid awkward language usage that leads to awkward sentence structure.
Maintain Consistent Tense Usage
To maintain consistent tense usage, always write in one tense throughout a sentence or paragraph. When changing between tenses, do so thoughtfully by signaling the shift with appropriate context or transitions.
Avoid Common Grammar Mistakes
Once you know how to detect grammar mistakes and repair them effectively, you must establish habits that will help reduce or eradicate such instances in the future.
Proofreading Techniques
Proofreading can help identify grammar errors before they slip through the cracks, so take an extra set of eyes with you when reviewing your writing to review it as an extra set of eyes can spot errors you missed.
Grammar Tools
Modern technology offers several grammar tools, such as Grammarly or ProWritingAid, that can quickly detect and correct errors. These programs are particularly helpful to writers seeking a second opinion of their writing.
Reading Aloud to Identify Grammar Errors
Reading your work aloud can help identify awkward sentences and grammar issues more quickly; hearing what you have written increases the odds that errors that might escape detection by simply looking might surface when hearing rather than just seeing.
Regular Grammar Practice
Grammar, like any skill, becomes stronger through regular practice. Take steps to develop and refine your language usage regularly by reading books on writing, taking grammar quizzes, or seeking professional editing advice. Book editing services can also offer invaluable assistance if you want an outside perspective.
Conclusion
Grammar mistakes may be commonplace, but they need not limit your writing. By learning to recognize and correct these errors, you can improve the quality of your writing while more clearly communicating its message. Even professional authors need editing services – don’t be intimidated into seeking help and support from an established book editing and publishing company to polish and error-proof your text. With practice and attention to detail, you will soon master grammar and become an efficient author.
“Writing is a craft, and every craft requires continual improvement.”
