Grammar
Beware, o beware! If your attention wavers for even an instant, bad grammar can creep in and spoil your sentence before you know it. Following are the most common grammatical errors:
- Pronoun number disagreement. "Someone left their books here." Someone is singular; their is plural. Use "her" or "his".
- Dangling modifier. This is a modifier with nothing to modify. "Seated one day at the organ, a new chord formed under my hands." Who was seated at the organ? The new chord? Better: "Seated one day at the organ, I found a new chord forming under my hands."
- It's/its confusion. It's means it is. Its shows possession, just like his. You would never write hi's to show possession, so don't write it's to show possession. "It's a shame the program can't correct its own errors."
- Comma splice. This is two sentences connected by only a comma. "Certain bacteria bring about the reduction of nitrates to nitrites, they are called denitrifying bacteria." Change the comma to a semi-colon or a period. Comma splices can creep into dialogue if you're not careful: "I will not go," he said, "you may be sure of that." Better: "I will not go," he said. "You may be sure of that."
- Run-on. Same as a comma splice but without the comma: two sentences run together. "I intend to go with your brother you may do as you please." The insertion of "and" following "brother" would correct that error.
- Lie/lay confusion. "We were just laying on the beach, minding our own business." What were you laying on the beach? Eggs? Lay needs an object to follow it, as in "He always lays his coat over a chair when he comes in." But: "We were lying on the beach."
- Verb disagreement. Be sure you know what your subject is before choosing your verb. "She's one of those women who always scrubs out her coffee pot every night." Who is the subject of all that follows, and it refers to women, a plural word. Correct: "She's one of those women who always scrub out their coffee pots every night."
- Like/as confusion. Don't use like when a verb follows. "I feel like Superwoman" but "I feel as if I could leap tall buildings in a single bound."
- Bad/badly confusion. Badly is an adverb that describes an action. So when you say "Don't feel badly," you're saying "Don't do a bad job of feeling with your fingers." "Don't feel bad" is correct.
- Different from/than. One thing differs from another; never use different than. "This job is different from what I expected."
- Center on/around confusion. A center is a point -- center on that point; center around doesn't make any sense. "Her attention was centered on the early years of the Ch'ing Dynasty."
EllipsesThey are valid punctuation marks used to indicate the omission of a word or the interruption of a sentence. Always make sure it is an ellipse you need and not a dash and please don’t overuse them. Don Marquis once wrote about ellipses in this fashion:
"When you see . . . three little dots . . . such as these . . . in the stuff of a modern versifier . . . even in our stuff . . . it means that the writer is trying to suggest something rather . . . well, elusive, if you get what we mean . . . and the reason he suggests it instead of expressing it . . . is . . . very often . . . because it is an almost idea . . . instead of a real idea."-- Auriel Douglas and Michael Strumpf, Webster’s New World Guide to Punctuation, Prentice-Hall, 1988
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