Students have to write something or the other in their lives. Hence, writing becomes an essential part of their chores. They write assignments, papers, dissertations, etc and in all of them, the issue they face is making grammatical mistakes. As a result, they end up searching for grammar and punctuation checker. So, here are eleven major mistakes that as a student, you have to take care of, for amazing writing.
11 Grammar Mistakes to Avoid While Writing
These eleven mistakes are the most common ones, so make sure you avoid them. As making them annoys the reader and the content becomes difficult to understand. Many universities keep some percentage of the total marks to presentation and grammar of the writing. So, making blunders can cost marks. Do read the following points below and try to avoid them.
Spelling Mistakes
When writing papers or doing any type of academic work, students tend to make a lot of spelling mistakes. These are typically technical words related to the paper, as they are more complex to spell. Besides, they also make mistakes with some commonly used words. For instance, they write acheive, loose or wether instead of achieve, lose, or whether. Ensure that you avoid them.
Incorrect Quantifiers
Quantifiers are often used in writing, but students get confused with their usage. For instance, they write a lot of instead of much to quantify any noun. Learn the rules of quantifiers before using them. For example, if you are writing a dissertation and need to use quantifiers, get help from any grammar tool. Not only that, you can also help with other assignments by searching for help with programming assignments.
Confusing Words
Various words look very similar but are different in their meaning. Students can’t understand what to use when, for instance, expect v.s accept, affect v.s effect, there v.s their, etc. So, if you are facing the same issue, first learn the meaning of each word and then use them in the correct situation.
Incorrect S.V.A
The crux of S.V.A (subject-verb agreement) is that you have to use a singular verb with a singular noun, and the same applies to the plural ones. But what students don’t understand is whether the noun they are using is one or many. For instance, pair of scissors is a singular noun, but most use plural verbs with it because of the S in the end, which makes them believe that it is a plural noun. You can check on google the singularity or plurality of the noun that you are using.
Incorrect Tenses
It is a big blunder students make of changing the tense within a clause or using the wrong tense to convey their message in a sentence. Incorrect tense makes the reader unable to understand the time frame of the action that happened in the sentence. Use one tense in one clause.
Vague Pronoun
It is another one, which is writing the content with vague pronouns. They use a pronoun which doesn’t tell which noun it refers to. As a result, the readability of the content gets reduced. It happens because of the lengthy content they have to write, which makes them lose the flow.
For instance, Rahul got his dog an injection and he is happy now. Who is content in the above sentence Rahul or his dog? So proofread your document before submission and check whether all the pronouns refer to the nouns they are used in place for.
Use of Passive Voice
Passive voice means writing the content, in a way that the situation is happening on the subject. Using a lot of passive voice instead of active in the content tends to make it weak. That also makes your content hard to understand, as in many sentences, the object comes first, then the subject. So, use active voice instead of passive as below.
Active- Garv hits a six.
Passive- A six was hit by Garv.
Fewer transition words
Transition words make your writing easy to understand. They also make your sentences connect and increase the readability score on grammar checker tools.
Incorrect- The blast happened in the gas plant, many workers died.
Correct- The blast happened in the gas plant, and as a result, many workers died.
Long Sentences
Writing long sentences, which have more than twenty words, makes it hard for the reader to understand. Break your long sentence into smaller parts and make separate sentences for each of them. Ensure, that these smaller ones are connected. Shorter sentences are easy to understand and also make the reader retain in your writing. Try to include only 10-15 words in each and not more than that.
Messy Writing
Students have so much to write, and as a result, they write longer paragraphs with no spaces, which makes the reader leave the writing. They add all types of data, images, graphs, and content in a short area with no spaces and good presentation. Include space, in between different elements of the writing and break your long paragraphs into smaller versions. These forms of writing make the reader leave your work because it is more painful to read such long paragraphs, which are so complex to understand.
Incorrect Punctuation
Either they don’t know when to use what punctuation character or don’t know the correct manner of using them. For example, Commas are used after an intro word, clause, or sentence to show a pause. The correct manner to use a comma is as follows.
Correct- Garv eats an apple, as he likes it.
Incorrect- Garv eats an apple ,as he likes it.
Incorrect- Garv eats an apple,as he likes it.
Wrong punctuation changes the meaning of the content. Also, adding them to your content not only makes it more understandable but also improves its presentation. As a result, the content looks more appealing.
Conclusion
These were the major blunders, which students tend to make while writing their content. Try to avoid them either by learning their rules online as they arise or you can use a grammar and punctuation checker. Correcting these mistakes will surely improve the quality of your writing. Not only does it make your writing more appealing to the reader, but also makes it easy to understand.
Read more – Writing a lengthy dissertation? Learn to Do it Like a Pro!
