Common grammar mistakes that make you look stupid
I will freely admit that my grammar can be horrible, my spelling can be even worse. Nowadays shortcuts for everything are commonplace, such as w/ in place of the word with and LOL for laugh out loud. There are still some words that can be flipped that will make you look really stupid.
They’re for their for there
- No: The managers are in they’re weekly planning meeting.
- Yes: The managers are in their weekly planning meeting.
- No: The techs have to check there cell phones at the door, and their not happy about it.
- Yes: The techs have to check their cell phones at the door, and they’re not happy about it.
Effect for affect
- No: The outage shouldn’t effect any users during work hours.
- Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.
- Yes: The outage shouldn’t have any effect on users.
- Yes: We will effect several changes during the downtime.
- Note: Impact is not a verb. Purists, at least, beg you to use affect instead:
- No: The outage shouldn’t impact any users during work hours.
- Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.
- Yes: The outage should have no impact on users during work hours.
Then for than
- No: The accounting department had more problems then we did.
- Yes: The accounting department had more problems than we did.
- Note: Here’s a sub-peeve. When a sentence construction begins with If, you don’t need a then. Then is implicit, so it’s
- superfluous and wordy:
- No: If you can’t get Windows to boot, then you’ll need to call Ted.
- Yes: If you can’t get Windows to boot, you’ll need to call Ted.
- Then and than are two I often screw up on, so I’ll apologize now, because I’m sure it will happen again soon.
The 10 grammar mistakes that make you look stupid can be read on Scribd, but they left off two that really bother me.
College for collage
- You go to college, if you went, you should have no problem spelling this one
Alot for a lot
- it is two words people! It will never be one.
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Comments
Olaf
Excellent!
2 pet peeves of mine:
To make a word a plural you (usually) just have to add a S, do NOT add ‘S
Example; plural of “photo” is “photos” NOT “photo’s”
If you’re a big apostrophe fan, you can talk about the photo’s quality, of lack thereof.
Also,
“Momentarily” means “FOR a moment” NOT “IN a moment”
Adrienne Saia
Ugh… a DEAL BREAKER for me is the mixing-up of “YOUR” and “YOU’RE.” Also… “to” and “too.” I’m such a grammar nazi, those just drive me nuts, even in text messaging or IMs… I’m just happy that someone else is as anal retentive as I am!