Writing Tips Wednesdays: 5 Common Grammar Mistakes You're Probably Making

If you’re a writer (and today, everyone is a writer to some extent), you probably know at least the very basics of grammar. All sentences should have a subject and a verb, for example.

However, did you also know that even the best of writers often fall into these grammar traps? Find out 5 common grammar mistakes everyone makes and how to fix them below:

“There Are” Sentences

There are 14 cows in the field. There are 12 birds. There are eight ways to tie your shoe.

All of these sentences start with “there are” and all of the sentences are boring. Sure, “there are” is an accurate statement in many cases, but too much use of the phrase sounds lazy and boring. Even if there are 14 cows in the field, try to make the sentence a little more exciting. “14 cows stood in a single line in farmer Jo’s field” is a more interesting sentence.

Neglecting Commas

Some writers are not sure when to use commas, so they avoid them altogether. This becomes a problem when you have a sentence like: before the students arrived the teacher cleaned the desks washed the windows and straightened the chairs. Your brain doesn’t know how to arrange the sentence, so you feel weird while reading it. Put the commas where they belong. Before the students arrived, the teacher cleaned the desks, washed the windows, and straightened the chairs.

Lose/Loose

Did you lose your loose change? Go find it then. I find this is normally a typo error, but it still is important to remember. Lose means to misplace, loose means not tight.

Parallel Errors

When you make a list, all of the verbs should agree. The kids washed the windows, drove to the store, to eat candy in the parking lot. This makes your brain hurt a bit, which should be avoided, if possible. Change that to eat to ate, and you’re good. Try to end all words with the same modifier, such as by using all “ing” words, or “ed” words.

Passive Voice Only

Passive voice is the use of “to be” verbs. Instead of the subject doing the action, the subject is being acted upon by something else.

This is passive: The paper was signed by all the children.

This is active: All the children signed the paper.

 Passive writing sounds sluggish and boring. You can’t always avoid passive voice, but try to keep it to a minimum.

What common grammar mistakes do you make most often? 

Didn't see your grammar error here? Find 10 more common grammar errors here.

Brenda is a fellow book-lover and coffee-addict. She is a freelance writer, punctuation nerd, and grammar enthusiast. Her favorite book genres are Science Fiction, Fantasy with a Twist, and Dystopian. Brenda blogs about books, writing and more at Daily Mayo. Find her here on CaW for Writing Tips Wednesdays the first Wednesday of every month.

Follow Brenda on Facebook and Twitter or subscribe to updates from Daily Mayo to keep up with all the exciting things in her life; ranging from drinking coffee to get through the day to drinking coffee just for fun.