Grammar can be a pain in the butt, but grammar can also be fun. In the recent weeks, the Grammar Guide has been rather serious. Why don’t we have a little bit of fun today, and take a look at this infographic called “15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly”? ((Source: copyblogger))
The light tone of the title notwithstanding, the mistakes – let’s call a spade a spade – are really not that silly at all. As we always say, everyone makes mistakes. When it comes to the 15 in the infographic, however, unless they are typographical mistakes, committing the errors makes a writer look bad. I see two reasons for that:
- These mistakes make you look like you do not know the basics of grammar/word usage.
- These mistakes make you look sloppy. They can simply mean you do not proofread you work.
So what are the 15 goofy mistakes? Most of them will not surprise you, especially since we’ve covered some of them in the past. Here’s a quick rundown before you take a look at the infographic.
- Your/You’re
- It’s/Its
- There/Their/They’re
- Affect/Effect
- Then/Than
- Loose/Lose
- Me, Myself, and I
- Improper use of the apostrophe
- Could of/Would of/Should of (Nooooooo! Darth Vader style)
- Complement/Compliment
- Fewer/Less
- Historic/Historical
- Principal/Principle
- Literally
- The Dangling Participle
15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly
I like the concept presented in the intro: “Engaging online writing is informal, conversational, and fun, but certain goofy mistakes just make you look silly…and not in a good way.” I don’t know about you, but I agree, and I definitely think that “informal, conversation, and fun” does not equate to goofy mistakes!
Which of these do you (sometimes) make? Off the top of my head, the most recent one I made was to interchange loose and lose – courtesy of fingers flying faster than my brain. Proofreading did help, though!
Which ones bug you? For me, could of, would of, and should of just does not cut it. No, I don’t count them as typographical errors!
More pet peeves: Writers not knowing the difference between “further” and “farther” or “more than” and “over.” Adults (!!!) using words like “prolly” instead of “probably” and “addy” instead of “address.” My all-time favorite sign of ignorance? “Welp” — as in, “Welp, I guess I’ll go to bed now.” AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH! And “supposably” is an actual word — it’s just rarely used properly.
Great post. One huge pet peeve is no. 8, the incorrect use of apostrophe. I can’t believe I fairly often see words that are plural, not possessive, with apostrophes. Ex: “We bought a few car’s.” Like nails on chalkboard.
I can actually understand most of the others as most involve confusing one word with another. Speaks to vocab. And yes, can be a bit sloppy, but still understandable.
I love this, especially #15. It’s not quite as obvious as the others but you can usually spot it when proofreading.
Most of these are errors in word usage rather than grammar problems. They could have had misplaced modifiers, or the one thing that drives me really crazy: when pronouns and nouns don’t agree in number!!! As in, “When a person does not care about agreement, I want to take them by their neck and strangle them.”
There is a commercial I see every now and then that talks about “… see less dark spots…” I cringe every time I hear it.
My greatest peeve …
“She/he … broke her arm / leg / … etc. ”
Really?
Did she/he use a hammer?
Why not just say … “her arm/leg was broken”
Why would anyone hurt themselves? Everyone seems to say this incorrectly. The news, books, articles … everyone. And, it is so easy to just say it correctly!!
Me, myself (heh heh), I simply can’t stand this error that I see in print (and hear in conversation) all the time:
“I should have went there.”
Really?
Arrrrgggghhhhh!
Or, the silly grammar rule being broken when one says:
“I seen them yesterday.”
Or, actually, when quote-marks are put (incorrectly) before a period or comma (shown correctly herein, in this note).
I have a few dozen more silly grammar rules that writers should avoid but I’ll stop here, now, while I’m still fairly even-tempered…
Very nice post. I just started to write in English to shape my grammar and vocabulary. I can say I’m not good at it, but I tried my best. I tended to do “the dangling participle” when I write something, because I still use my language point of view than English point of view. That’s the hardest part, but working on it. Thanks for posting this info. Nice to meet you 🙂
I love this post.
Ironic:
“2. These mistakes make you look sloppy. They can simply mean you do not proofread you work.”