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.
Sources Cited
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General Table of Contents- Subject-Verb Disagreement
- Could of
- Your and You’re
- Case of Pronouns
- Subjunctive Mood
- Dangling Participles
- There, Their, They’re
- Affect vs. Effect
- It’s vs. Its
- Lead vs. Led
- Principle vs. Principal
- Bring vs. Take
- The Horrible Like Word
Detailed Table of Contents
1 - Subject-Verb Disagreement - “There’s lots of these mistakes.”- There is - Huge Grammatical Mistake
- Three Rules on Subject-Verb Agreement
- Common Traps to Avoid
- Subjects Joined by and
- Subjects Joined by or
- Subjects Joined by Other Connectors
- Group Nouns: majority do or majority does?
- British Approach to Group Nouns
- None - Singular or Plural?
- Each - Singular or Plural?
- Now let’s fix the chapter title…
2 - Could of - “We could of used the right helping verb.”- We should fix the chapter title…
3 - Your and You’re - “Your leaving out the word are.”- So our chapter title should read…
4 - Case of Pronouns - “You and him confuse the case of pronouns.”- Memorize the Various Personal Pronouns
- Case of Pronouns - The Rule
- Pronoun as the Object of a Preposition
- Shall we fix the chapter title?
5 - Subjunctive Mood - “If I was you, I’d learn the subjunctive mood.”- Forming the Subjunctive Mood
- Situations Requiring the Subjunctive Mood
- Back to Our Robin Cook Examples
- Let’s now fix the chapter title…
6 - Dangling Participles - “When writing, your participle might dangle.”- Introductory Adjectival Phrases
- Examples of Nondangling Participles
- The chapter title needs repair…
7 - There, Their, They’re - “Their mixing up they’re theres.”- Chart Showing Various Uses
- So the title to this chapter should read…
8 - Affect vs. Effect - “Bad habits will effect your writing.”- Impact as a Verb
- Our chapter title should read…
9 - It’s vs. Its - “Should you take out it’s apostrophe?”- So to fix the title of this chapter…
10 - Lead vs. Led - “Yesterday, they lead us astray.”- Let’s fix the title of the chapter …
11 - Principle vs. Principal - “Here’s the principle reason he flunked the course.”- The Word Principle
- The Word Principal
- Principle vs. Principal - A Summary
- Our chapter title should thus read…
12 - Bring vs. Take - “Bring along this advice when you go to work.”- I hope you’ve learned to fix the chapter title…
13 - The Like Word - “Like, I’m like gonna learn how to like talk.”- Introducing Quotations with the Like Word
- Like - A Ubiquitous Word
- Parents - Take Note
- The Word Like Serves as 7 Parts of Speech
- Overusing Like Threatens Your Career
- Perhaps from now on you’ll say…
Conclusion to the Section on Grammatical Mistakes