This week’s guest post comes from Antonia Chitty, author Blogging: The Essential Guide.
Have you just started writing? Or do you have fabulous ideas but struggle a little with spelling and grammar? There are some common pitfalls that writers make that I see time and time again. Read this post and you will be able to avoid them.
Here are my top 10 mistakes to watch out for:
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Your / you are: Use ‘your’ when showing ownership, as in ‘your blog’ and ‘you are’ when you mean ‘you are’.
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It’s / its: It’s is short for ‘it is’, while ‘its’ is a possessive pronoun. E.g. ‘It’s going to be a long day’ or ‘My blog has rather lost its way’.
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There / their: there is a place, ‘their’ is something belonging to them.
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Practice /practise: think of advice and advise: practice with a c is a noun, whereas practise with a s is a verb.
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Effect / affect: Effect is a noun – you can create an effect, while affect is a verb – someone affects someone or something else.
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Complimentary / complementary : the former means something free, while the latter is something that fits well with something else.
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Loose / lose: loose is an adjective, a word that describes a noun’ my tooth is loose’, ‘there is a tiger on the loose’, and lose is a verb, ‘to lose your tooth’, ‘I always lose my tiger’.
- i.e. / e.g. i.e. means ‘that is’, whereas e.g. means for example.
- Could of, would of / could have, would have: Never write ‘could of’ – the correct English is could have. This applies for would, should, etc.
- A company is always singular e.g. ‘Dickens and Jones is opening a new branch’, rather than ‘Dickens and Jones are…’
Antonia Chitty is author of 15 practical non fiction books on business, health and parenting. Her latest book is Blogging: The Essential Guide which is useful for any author who wants to raise their profile online.