Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Technical Writing
Lec 3
Common Mistakes in English
Dr. Arwa Hussein
2/28/2015
2/28/2015
WRONG-WORD ERRORS
2/28/2015
Affect / Effect
The outage shouldn't affect anyone during work hours.
(verb to act on, influence)
The outage shouldn't have any effect on users. (noun
result)
2/28/2015
PUNCTUATION ERRORS
2/28/2015
USAGE ERRORS
Fragments
A complete sentence must have three components:
1. A subject (the actor in the sentence)
2. A predicate (the verb or action)
3. A complete thought (it can stand alone and make sense).
2/28/2015
Fragment examples
Went out of business after Starbucks Coffee opened.
One of my friends who won a contest by playing a variety of
instruments.
Since I went fishing.
Run-on sentences
A run-on sentence is sentence comprised of two or more independent
clauses not properly separated.
Lack of punctuation and/or conjunctions
Incorrect punctuation
A comma splicetwo independent clauses joined by a commais a
run-on sentence.
A run-on sentence is not simply a long sentence.
2/28/2015
Run-on sentences
Long sentences can be grammatically correct.
During the 1960s, development thinking, encompassing both ideology and
strategy, prioritized economic growth and the application of modern scientific
and technical knowledge as the route to prosperity in the underdeveloped world
and defined the "global development problem" as one in which less developed
nations needed to "catch up" with the West and enter the modern age of
capitalism and liberal democracy, in short, to engage in a form of modernization
that was equated with westernization (and an associated faith in the rationality
of science and technology). (86 words)
Run-on examples
My favorite Mediterranean spread is hummus it is
very garlicky.
It is nearly half past five we cannot reach town
before dark.
2/28/2015
Dangling Participles
A dangling participle is a word or phrase that modifies a
word not clearly stated or an unintended noun in the
sentence.
Correcting dangling participles:
Reword the sentence.
Provide the missing information.
Dangling Participle
After rotting in the cellar, my brother brought up some
oranges.
2/28/2015
Verb Tense
Verb tenses should be consistent throughout your writing.
Reviews of literature should be in the present tense.
Historical events should be in the past tense.
10
2/28/2015
Pronoun/Antecedent Agreement
Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns.
Antecedents are the words that the pronouns refer to.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in number,
gender, and person.
Number = singular or plural
Gender = masculine, feminine, or neuter
Person = 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person
11
2/28/2015
Subject/verb Agreement
Singular subjects must have singular verbs.
Plural subjects must have plural verbs.
Rule of thumb:
Subjects ending in s are plural
Verbs ending in s are singular
Correcting agreement errors:
Become familiar with irregular verb forms.
Focus on the subject, not any additional modifiers.
12
2/28/2015
Anyone,
Everyone,
Someone,
No One,
Nobody
Each
all, some
are singular or plural depending on what they're
referring to. (Is the thing referred to countable or not?)
Be careful choosing a verb to accompany such
pronouns.
13
2/28/2015
none,
Can be either singular or plural; it often doesn't matter
whether you use a singular or a plural verb unless
something else in the sentence determines its number.
None of you claims responsibility for this incident?
None of you claim responsibility for this incident?
None of the students have done their homework. (In this
last example, the word their precludes the use of the
singular verb.
14
2/28/2015
15
2/28/2015
nor or or
when nor or or is used the subject closer to the verb
determines the number of the verb. Whether the
subject comes before or after the verb doesn't
matter; the proximity determines the number.
16
2/28/2015
Homophones
17
2/28/2015
18
2/28/2015
eight
mistakes
choose
wait
sun
main
need
new
pair
PREVENTING ERRORS
19
2/28/2015
Editing yourself
End of lecture
20