It may not stress businessmen to think of new ways of minting money but the thought of being ridiculed for erroneous grammar certainly does. Proficiently scripted words are capable of etching a positive and intelligent image of an individual. Social networking sites and internet freely poke fun at careless use of grammar. A good grammar is a sign of an educated person. If you make grammar mistakes it would be better to rectify these yourself and remember them. Let us take a sneak peak in 10 grammar mistakes everybody makes.
10 Grammar Mistakes Everyone Makes
Irregardless
People often mix up words irrespective and regardless to form ‘irregardless’, which actually is not a word at all. Even the spell-check error will not convince them of the fault but in fact the correct word is regardless.
Affected by effect
If these two words still trouble you, then simplify by understanding that affect is an action where you are influencing something to happen. On the contrary the effect is the outcome of that influence or affect. Simple, right?
A lot of alot
If you like to indicate a plenty of something then better do it by placing a space between ‘a’ and ‘lot’ so the proper version is ‘a lot’ and never alot. This is one of the commonly repeated mistakes which people tend to ignore despite warnings from spell-check.
Lost over lose or loose
Though these words are homophones but interchanging their placement can seriously jeopardize the intent of a sentence. If your pants are loose then you must lose them – here loose indicates a fit whereas lose means to mislay. It is not ‘loose your shit’ but ‘lose your shit’. You do not have ‘lose motions’ but ‘loose motions’.
Apostrophes’
They indicate possessive noun or pronoun and must never be confused with plural form of the same. ‘Mr. Das’s diary’ is an incorrect interpretation of use of apostrophes; write Mr. Das’ diary instead. In singular or plural nouns that ends with‘s’, apostrophe comes after ‘s’.
Principal with principles
Some grammar mistakes people make is when they end up confusing ‘Principal’ – who factually is a person presiding over an institution – with ‘principle’ that literally means rules or fundamentals to guide your acts.
They’re there with their folly
Clearly, ‘they’re’ is an abbreviated form for ‘they are’, ‘there’ is used to refer to a place and ‘their’ indicates something possessed by a group. To put together in a sentence, ‘They’re moving out of there with their belongings.’ Pay close attention to it and you’ll remember it 🙂
‘To lie’ or ‘to lay’
The transitive verb ‘to lay’ is unknowingly mixed with the intransitive verb ‘to lie’. Thus whereas ‘birds lay eggs, servants lie a carpet.’ ‘Laying’ should not be confused with lying down at all. The difference however meagre can alter the meaning of the sentence completely.
The comma trouble
Oxford recommends that we must use comma to separate three or more words in a sentence; so a comma is put before the word ‘and’ too. Like – I had bread, butter, and milk for breakfast – is the apt use of comma. However using comma where you need to take a break in a sentence is almost imperative. ‘Let’s eat buddy’ is appropriately written as ‘Let’s eat, buddy’ lest you do want to gobble up your buddy.
Me and I
Though both words can be used to represent you but people confuse the usage more often than not. If the sentence has a mention of another person in the beginning of the sentence then you can represent yourself as I, for example, ‘Tom and I went for a coffee.’ But if the same couple is mentioned at the end of the sentence then ‘me’ must be used so the sentence becomes, ‘My sister went for coffee with Tom and me.’
Grammar and English are very important no matter what you do in life. We suggest you keep reading up on it. 🙂
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