Common Mistakes in English
from Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 748 (1979)
- Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
- Just between you and I, the case of pronouns is important.
- Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into English.
- Verbs has to agree in number with their subject.
- Don't use no double negatives.
- Being bad grammar, a writer should not use dangling modifiers.
- Join clauses good like a conjunction should.
- A writer must not shift your point of view
- About sentence fragments.
- Don't use run-on sentences you got to punctuate them.
- In letters essays and reports use commas to separate items in series.
- Don't use commas, which are not necessary.
- Parenthetical words however should be enclosed with commas.
- Its important to use apostrophes right in everybodys writing.
- Don't abbrev.
- Check to see if you any words out.
- In the case of a report, check to see that jargonwise, it's A-OK.
- As far as incomplete constructions, they are wrong.
- About repetition, the repetition of a word might be real effective repetition
--take, for instance the repetition of Abraham Lincoln.
- In my opinion, I think that an author when he is writing should definitly not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that he does not really need in order to put his message across.
- Use parallel construction not only to be concise but also clarify.
- It behooves us all to avoid archaic expressions.
- Mixed metaphors are a pain in the neck and ought to be weeded out.
- Consult the dictionery to avoid mispelings.
- To ignorantly split an infinitive is a practice to religiously avoid.
- Last but not least, lay of cliches.
George L. Trigg
http://fy.chalmers.se/~f3aamp/teaching/english.html