Many people, including me, an ex-English teacher, can easily make mistakes when writing, especially when writing on line and typing into forms. These mistakes can be very embarrassing, and can also make you lose credibility with an educated audience. They can also lower your English grades in school. It's important to learn to use words that are spelled differently but sound alike, correctly. It's also important to proofread what you have written -- especially if you are going to publish it on line with no one to edit it but you. When I taught high school English, I would flunk any paper that used the wrong word in each of these groups:
here, hear
there, their, they're
to, two, too
Most people know how to spell these words, but sometimes make mistakes in using them. These are mistakes that no spell checker will catch for you, since even if you misuse them, they are correct spellings of actual words. Here are some sentences to help you keep them straight:
The children I hear are here.
They're eating their lunches over there.
Two boys want to eat two cookies each and too much candy, too.
If you memorize these three sentences and how they are spelled, you can avoid careless mistakes that will make people think you aren't educated.
But suppose you do know how to properly use the above words and many other groups of words that sound alike and are spelled differently (known as homonyms). It's still very easy to to accidentally use the wrong one or to forget important punctuation marks. That's when proofreading becomes very important. English is a complex language. One can easily use the wrong word, have parts of a sentence that don't agree with each other, or make make one of the three fatal sentence errors.
In English, it's important for sentence parts to agree with each other. Example: Roses is red. This sentence should be Roses are red.The reason is that roses is a plural word and are is the plural form of the verb to be. Singular words such as man and dog go with singular verb forms such as walks and barks. Plural words go with plural verbs. So we have these sentence that match:
The man walks. The men walk.
The dog barks. The dogs bark.
You probably know this. In English all kinds of words and sentence parts must match each other. Sometimes, though, you can make a mistake when you are in a hurry and not notice. I do it myself. That's why I proofread before I publish anything important -- such as a blog. If you aren't sure you know what is correct, or you are still learning English, please contact me through my web site and I can help you pick out a book that will help you.
The last big mistake people make in their writing is to make sentence errors. There are three common sentence errors. Here are three ways I can make an error with those last two sentence:
1. The last big mistake people make. Is to make sentence errors.
2. The last big mistake people make is to make sentence errors, there are three common sentence errors.
3. The last big mistake people make is to make sentence errors there are three common sentence errors.
#1 above contains two sentence fragments. Neither one of them makes a complete thought -- the job a complete sentence must do -- by itself. Written together, they do.
#2 is a comma splice. Two complete thoughts, which should be written as separate sentences, are separated by a comma so they look like one sentence.
#3 is a run-on sentence. Instead of separating two complete sentences with a comma as in a comma splice, a run-on sentence has no punctuation between the two complete thoughts. Think of this as similar to running a stop light when you are driving. Each complete thought should be written as a separate sentence that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period.
These are the most common mistakes people make when writing English. There are others I may explain in another intel later. The important thing now is to find a good way to proofread so that you can find and correct your mistakes before you publish your work to the Internet or hand in your term paper or composition to your teacher.
The easiest way I know to proofread to find mistakes you can recognize is to read your entire piece of writing out loud to yourself. This is especially important if you are typing on a computer screen where it is very easy to make a mistake. Most good readers have a habit of scanning what they read for ideas rather than actually looking closely at each individual word they have written. Our brain sees entire groups of words as one idea that our brain translates into meaning. When we read like this, our brains just don't notice mistakes in individual words.
When you read out loud with expression, two things happen. First, you have to slow down and read each individual word. When you look closely, you may find a mistake. Secondly, if you are reading with expression, you will notice that you have a period to end a sentence when the thought isn't complete yet. Your voice will want to keep going at the period -- not stop. A period says stop! If you haven't finished a thought and you see a period that comes too soon, you can correct the sentence by removing the period from the middle of the complete thought. You will also notice if your voice has finished the thought and there is no period. You can then either put a semicolon between the two complete thoughts (instead of the comma in a comma splice). You can also put a period at the end of one thought and change the first word of the next complete thought to a capital letter. This is also the way to correct a run-on sentence. Unless the two complete thoughts are very closely related, it's better to make two separate sentences instead of using a semicolon between the thoughts.
When you are reading aloud, you will also notice when parts of a sentence don't match. If you have learned to use English correctly when you speak, words that should match and don't will jump out and shout at you. You will know that "The boy eat his dinner" isn't right. Your ear will tell you. If your ear does not tell you, you will need to study your English harder, and I can help you find a book or other resource to help you. Just contact me through the web site below.
I hope this intel will encourage you to take the time and make the effort to proofread all important writing that will be seen by anyone other than you. Most of us are just glad we have finished a writing task and want to move on to the next chore we need to do. Taking the extra time to proofread a business letter, school assignment, job application, web page, or blog, can be crucially important. It may make a difference in the grade you receive or what a boss or client may think of you. If I had not taken my own advice while writing this, I might not have discovered the almost 100 mistakes I have made and corrected. I hope I have caught them all. If not, be sure and tell me. It has actually taken me more time to proofread this and correct my mistakes than it took me to write this in the first place.
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