Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Grammar Errors All Writers Should Know

ArcaMax Publishing  provided this humorous take on grammar errors. A reader of this blog sent me a note to tell me that the origin of this list is from William Safire's Rules for Writers. The site said to "Share this Story" so I'm sharing it, hoping the humor will help you remember the right way to write. Many of these are common writing problems are negative things that catches an editors eye. I hope you get a chuckle but also hang on to the advice.

Tips with English Grammar
1. Don't abbrev.

2. Check to see if you any words out.

3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.

4. About sentence fragments.

5. When dangling, don't use participles.

6. Don't use no double negatives.

7. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

8. Just between You and i, case is important.

9. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

10. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.

11. Its important to use apostrophe's right.

12. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.

13. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.

14. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should.

15. begin with a capital and end with a period

16. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.

17. In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas

18. to keep a string of items apart.

19. Watch out for irregular verbs which have creeped into our language.

20. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

21. Avoid unnecessary redundancy.

22. A writer mustn't shift your point of view.

23. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.

24. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.

25. Avoid cliches like the plague.

6 comments:

Sarah Allen said...

Ha :) This is great. Things every writer should, indeed, know, and put in a format that is fun and easy to remember. Thanks :)

Sarah Allen
(my creative writing blog)

Keli Gwyn said...

Thanks for the smile--and the reminder to catch these errors when we're editing our work.

Jill W said...

I love this! Number six was my favorite. Thanks, Gail!

Gail Gaymer Martin said...

Hi Sarah, Keli and Jill. So glad you enjoyed the humorus look at grammar erros. Sometimes humor helps remind us of things we know but neglect to check when we edit. Glad it gave you a smile plus a great reminder.

Gail

Martha Ramirez said...

LOve it:)

Keiki Hendrix said...

Loved this...