Hey! Hope you all are doing well. This blog is all about the very common Mistakes in English Grammar that people make. Grammar is the way in which any language is structured. Learning any language or improving any language you already know, can be divided into two parts-
- Improving your vocabulary
- Understanding all the rules of grammar of that language.
Table of Contents
Importance of Grammar
Where on one hand you can speak or write any language with basic knowledge of basic vocabulary; grammar is the most important aspect of any language. So it goes for the English language too. Wrong grammar can not only leave a bad impression on the listener’s or reader’s mind but may also confuse them or even change the meaning of the whole sentence.
English Grammar has a huge number of rules and it is very difficult to keep each rule in mind while writing or speaking it. This is because it has many rules that were borrowed from other languages. If a Grammar ‘Perfectionist’ read this article, they might find some mistakes in it too.
Apart, from the many rules being there, there are many exceptions to those rules too and these also may change with time, which makes Grammar ‘not easy.’ Just remember to practise as much as you can. By taking one step at a time, you can cover distances up to miles and miles without even realising. Your ‘one step’ can be this blog, so take it.
Here are some of the very common grammatical mistakes that even native speakers may make:
Difference between its/it’s
This is a very common mistake that people make. People either interchange their places or think that both the words have same meaning which ends up in a grammatical blunder. Let’s see what each word means.
Its – A possessive noun
E.g. My cat was playing with its toys.
It’s – contraction of ‘it is’
E.g. It’s my pet dog.
(Note: if you ever get confused try reading the sentence with ‘it is’. If it sounds correct then one should use ‘it’s’ and if it does not, then ‘its’ should be used.)
They’re vs There vs Their
Just like the above mistake, this too is very common and people generally are confused between what/when to use or tend to forget or get confused about their usage.
They’re – Contraction of ‘They are’
E.g. They’re going to love this decoration.
Their – Refers to something owned by a group i.e. the possessive form of ‘they’
E.g. Their car is parked in front of our house.
There – refers to a place
E.g. I will never let my brother go there again.
Affect vs Effect
This is one of the most common pairs of words that confuses many people. However, once you know the proper meaning and usage of the two, you will find that it’s not as difficult as you think.
Affect – “to act on; produce an effect or change in”. It is generally used as a Verb
E.g. The tornado adversely affected the people of the country.
Effected – “result; consequence”. Generally, it is used as a noun.
E.g. Sunburn is an effect of exposure to the sun.
To avoid any confusion, try to remember the word: AVEN:
A- Affect (Is)
V- Verb
E- Effect (Is)
N- Noun
Semicolons
Semicolons are used to connect two closely related independent clauses i.e. if we separate both the clauses they will still make sense and could be a sentence in itself.
E.g. Call me at around 9 pm today; I’ll tell you the whole story.
However, If there are coordinating conjunctions between two such sentences like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’ etc. – comma is used.
Another use of semicolon is to separate the items in a list, when they contain comma themselves.
E.g. I have two options for prom; a maxi dress, which is red in colour and made of silk; or a short dress, which is pink and has sequins.
Hair and Hairs
This is probably a very common mistake people make. Hair is a collective noun and could refer to a ‘bunch of hair’ or just “a hair”.
E.g. I just dyed my hair black.
OR
E.g. I found a hair in my soup.
However, if we want to talk about the number of hair, we could use the word ‘strands’ to better describe it.
To understand this let us see an example
We would never say “I want 2 sugars in my coffee”
But we could say “I want 2 sugar cubes in my coffee”
Lose vs. Loose
Lose- “To suffer a loss, to be deprived of, to part with, or to fail to keep possession of”. It is a verb
E.g. The team is going to lose without him.
Loose – As an adjective, it means “opposite of tightly fitted”. As a verb, it means “to release”
E.g. Verb: The protesters set the zoo animals on loose.
Adjective: This dress is loose around my belly.
Misplaced Or Dangling Modifiers
A clause, word or phrase that is improperly separated from the word it describes/modifies is called a Misplaced modifier. You can generally figure out a sentence that has a misplaced modifier by reading it because it is going to sound weird and improper. But there are also times when it is hard to figure out whether a sentence has a dangling modifier or not.
E.g. Incorrect: Having read the book, the movie is going to be a hit
Correct: Having read the book, I think the movie is going to be a hit.
(Here in the 1st sentence we can see that the phrase “having read the book” has nothing to modify and hence is a dangling modifier. However, in the second sentence “I” is being modified by the same phrase and the sentence now makes more sense.)
Incomplete Comparisons
A comparison is always between more than one noun. However, if the speaker or the writer does not identify all the nouns that are being compared, it is called incomplete comparison.
E.g. Incorrect: I saw the advertisement of the Soda of Brand X. They claim that it has 30% lesser calories.
(The question that arises in the mind when you read this sentence is with what calories it is being compared to?)
Correct: I saw the advertisement of the soda of brand X. They claim it has 30% lesser calories than all the other sodas in the market)
This is it for today. We hope you have learned something new and if you didn’t then just know that we will be writing more parts of this blog which will help you to level up your grammar game.
By the end of this series of blogs, you would have learned many new rules.
We will be compiling some more mistakes in the next blog so that your Grammar freak friends do not get a chance to correct you anymore. Click here for Most Common Grammatical Mistakes (Part- 2). Till then, Ciao.
Thank You
