Common writing mistakes to avoid and what to do instead

Key quotes:

• "There are multiple online sentence correction tools nowadays, however, only you are responsible for the quality of your writing."
• "To help you master your grammar and do not rely too much on sentence checkers and fixers, we’ve come up with a list of five tricky mistakes you should avoid."
• "The rule is that you can put commas before “which,” but not “that.” Let’s have a look at this simple example: Bad: He’s got a beautiful house, that is located in a good neighborhood."
• "Good: He’s got a beautiful house, which is located in a good neighborhood."
• "Important: you can use both “that” and “which,” but you should avoid using commas if the word “that” is critical for your sentence."
• "Bad: He’s got a beautiful house that is located in a good neighborhood."

Key quotes:

• "Recently Grammarly asked its social media communities which writing mistakes were the worst kinds of errors."
• "Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites."
• "Irregular verbs, like those above, must be memorized, but compound subjects follow a simple rule—they are plural."
• "According to Grammarly’s research, run-on sentences are among the top grammar mistakes made by writers worldwide."
• "A run-on sentence contains two or more independent clauses (a group of words that contains a subject and a verb and that can stand alone as a sentence) that are not connected with correct punctuation."
• "Though there are different kinds of run-on sentence errors, most often writers neglect to use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, etc.)."

Key quotes:

• "We’ve made our share of embarrassing mistakes, so much so that we made this image: That confession notwithstanding, here are our five tips for avoiding common spelling and grammar errors: Technology is great, and spell check can be helpful at times, but we all know that it doesn’t catch everything."
• "I’m sure you’ve seen a few pictures like the following that attest to its “usefulness”: Instead of letting a program catch (more like miss) your mistakes, either proofread your writing yourself or … Before hitting Send or turning it in by hand, have someone you trust read over your essay, letter, or résumé to see if there are any errors you might have overlooked."
• "Speaking of having a fresh set of eyes, the worst thing you could do is proofread your writing immediately after finishing it."

Key quotes:

• "To save you time and money, as well as embarrassment, Grammarly collaborated with Daily Writing Tips and Write to Done to compile a list of 30 grammar tips for writers."
• "In our example, the adverb “really fast” modifies the verb “ran.” But does “really fast” paint a more vivid word-picture for the reader? In the first sentence we have two prepositional phrases—“over the top” and “of the hill.” Excessive prepositional phrases render your writing wordy."
• "(In the example sentence, is the subject listening to music slowly or slowly getting a headache?) To correct a squinting modifier, move its position in the sentence to make it clear to the reader which word you intend to modify."
• "In our example sentence demonstrating an ambiguous pronoun, the reader is unsure who the second “he” is."
• "As noted in the corrected example, the pronoun “he” refers to Tim, who is card-blocking Helga."
• "When a writer joins two independent sentences with a comma instead of separating them with a period or a coordinating conjunction, that’s a comma splice."

Key quotes:

• "And I’m constantly surprised at how even the most erudite and celebrated professionals and brands can make the most basic writing mistakes."
• "Look, I’m not getting on my high-horse too much here, because even as a professional writer, I sometimes make the odd mistake, too."
• "The grammatical offence is where you use a comma when you should be using a period, like this: People make the mistake because they don’t actually know what a sentence is, they merely use intuition to break up sentences with commas."
• "This is highly common on About pages where an amateur has tried to describe an entire brand in 100 words and ends up doing this: As a team with a track record in aligning stakeholder interests and producing community endorsed outcomes to deliver timely approvals, we believe that everyone has the right to live happy, prosperous lives."
• "Notice the modifier (As a team with a track record in aligning stakeholder interests and producing community endorsed outcomes to deliver timely approvals) has got nothing to do with the actual sentence (we believe that everyone has the right to live happy, prosperous lives.) Confusing much?."