Common Grammatical and Stylistic Errors

1. Noun-verb mismatch, e.g. "A herd of horses are better than a flock of sheep" ("herd" is singular). "The City feels that this is a bad idea". (A city can't feel). "This paper will describe..." (Paper can't describe; only people can)

2. Adjective used as adverb, e.g. and especially "I did good in this course"

3. Split infinitive, e.g. "I urge you to not support this Bill".

4. Misplaced modifier, e.g. "We need to stop dumping waste into the environment which kills the fish". To avoid this mistake, put the modifier as close as possible to the noun it is modifying. Repaired: "We need to stop dumping waste, which kills the fish, into the environment".

5. Dangling (or misplaced) participle A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical SUBJECT of the sentence. Wrong: "As the largest reptiles ever to have lived, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". This suggests that small mammals were the largest reptiles ever to have lived. Repaired: "Being small and defenseless, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". More examples).

6. Ending a sentence with a preposition, e.g. "This is something we need to work on".

7. Starting a paragraph with a conjunction that should refer to the previous sentence, e.g. "Furthermore,...", "However,..."

8. Run-on sentences (two complete sentences joined by a comma rather than a period or semicolon) "The lab is a dangerous place, you should wear a lab coat". (could be repaired by the addition of "so".

9. Incomplete sentences, including those with no verb, e.g. "These animals could be harmed by various things. Pollution, for example."

10. Mixing up the "notorious confusables" (confusibles?)(e.g. their vs. there).

11. Compound adjective not hyphenated.

12. Use of pleonasms, redundancies and tautologies (needless repetition of words over and over again multiple times)

13. A series of statements without any connections to improve the flow.

14. Commensurating incommensurables, e.g. "Reproduction in Hydra is unlike sponges" (Should be: "Reproduction in Hydra is unlike that in sponges").

15. Comparative with no comparator, e.g. "Species that reproduce asexually exhibit a relatively uniform distribution of neoblasts". (Relative to what?). "The cells at the bottom of the clone were larger" (Larger than what?).

Other useful sites if you want to improve your writing skills:

Guide to Grammar and Writing

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