Common Grammatical Mistakes

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Cast of Characters

In some of these discussions, you'll meet various characters: Miss Hamrick is my eighth-grade English teacher (bless her soul); Amber and Igor are cave-dwelling, primitive ancestors, who, along with Miss Hamrick, invented the English language 6,412 years ago.

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General Table of Contents

1. Subject-Verb Disagreement
2. Could of
3. Your and You’re
4. Case of Pronouns
5. Subjunctive Mood
6. Dangling Participles
7. There, Their, They’re
8. Affect vs. Effect
9. It’s vs. Its
10. Lead vs. Led
11. Principle vs. Principal
12. Bring vs. Take
13. The Horrible Like Word

Detailed Table of Contents

1 - Subject-Verb Disagreement - “There’s lots of these mistakes.”

1. There is - Huge Grammatical Mistake
2. Three Rules on Subject-Verb Agreement
3. Common Traps to Avoid
4. Subjects Joined by and
5. Subjects Joined by or
6. Subjects Joined by Other Connectors
7. Group Nouns: majority do or majority does?
8. British Approach to Group Nouns
9. None - Singular or Plural?
10. Each - Singular or Plural?
11. Now let’s fix the chapter title…

2 - Could of - “We could of used the right helping verb.”

1. We should fix the chapter title…

3 - Your and You’re - “Your leaving out the word are.”

1. So our chapter title should read…

4 - Case of Pronouns - “You and him confuse the case of pronouns.”

1. Memorize the Various Personal Pronouns
2. Case of Pronouns - The Rule
3. Pronoun as the Object of a Preposition
4. Shall we fix the chapter title?

5 - Subjunctive Mood - “If I was you, I’d learn the subjunctive mood.”

1. Forming the Subjunctive Mood
2. Situations Requiring the Subjunctive Mood
3. Back to Our Robin Cook Examples
4. Let’s now fix the chapter title…

6 - Dangling Participles - “When writing, your participle might dangle.”

1. Introductory Adjectival Phrases
2. Examples of Nondangling Participles
3. The chapter title needs repair…

7 - There, Their, They’re - “Their mixing up they’re theres.”

1. Chart Showing Various Uses
2. So the title to this chapter should read…

8 - Affect vs. Effect - “Bad habits will effect your writing.”

1. Impact as a Verb
2. Our chapter title should read…

9 - It’s vs. Its - “Should you take out it’s apostrophe?”

1. So to fix the title of this chapter…

10 - Lead vs. Led - “Yesterday, they lead us astray.”

1. Let’s fix the title of the chapter …

11 - Principle vs. Principal - “Here’s the principle reason he flunked the course.”

1. The Word Principle
2. The Word Principal
3. Principle vs. Principal - A Summary
4. Our chapter title should thus read…

12 - Bring vs. Take - “Bring along this advice when you go to work.”

1. I hope you’ve learned to fix the chapter title…

13 - The Like Word - “Like, I’m like gonna learn how to like talk.”

1. Introducing Quotations with the Like Word
2. Like - A Ubiquitous Word
3. Parents - Take Note
4. The Word Like Serves as 7 Parts of Speech
5. Overusing Like Threatens Your Career
6. Perhaps from now on you’ll say…

Conclusion to the Section on Grammatical Mistakes