If you will give a dollar for every grammar mistake that you have made in your life, perhaps you are rich by now.
Unluckily, though, we are not paid for saying or writing grammar mistakes. It is not just important to know how to start a blog because writing grammatically correct contents for your blog is also a must-know.
It is said that good grammar is sexy!
Alternatively, bad grammar is not just a big turn off to many, but augments the possibility that people may completely skip your message. Worse, you may even look dumb to other people.
To save you from possible humiliation, you can consider avoiding the six blog writing grammatical errors that can make you look dumb.
1. Excessive Prepositional Phrases
What are these prepositions?
These are those words that usually come before a noun or a pronoun to show time, location or direction.
For instance, your sentence is: Over the top of the hill is my house. In this sentence, there are two prepositions.
Instead, you can simplify your sentence into: On top of the hill is my house.
Keep in mind that too much prepositional phrases will only render your article wordy. If possible, make it simple.
2. The Dangling Modifier
This error happens when a modifier is misplaced that due to its location in the sentence, it can modify the phrase that immediately comes before or after it.
For example the sentence is: After declining for a year, Matt tried a new technique to increase his income.
Here, what is declining? Is it Matt or his income?
The displacement of modifier in the sentence makes it confusing to understand what the sentence is about.
To correct this, move the position of the modifier in the sentence to make the sentence easy to understand. e.g. After a year, Matt tried a new technique to increase his declining income., or Matt tried a new technique to increase his declining income after a year.
3. Overuse of Adverbs
Adverbs are those that describe a verb, an adjective or another adverb. They commonly end in "ly".
Using adverbs may be fine but excessive use of it indicates weak verb selections.
4. Misplaced Commas and Quotation Marks
This is a common mistake of many. A lot of people do not know that commas and quotation marks can drastically alter the message that they would like to convey.
To better understand the concept of these two important marks in grammar, let us discuss one after the other.
Commas
There are three main uses of commas. These are:
- To separate independent clause - An independent clause is a group of words that can already express a thought. You can make use of commas to separate independent clauses joined by "but", "yet", "and", "or", "for", etc.
- To separate elements in series - Every element in series must be separated using a comma. For instance: I bought an apple, a chocolate, and a soda in the supermarket. You can place the last comma or not, it's optional.
- To separate opening phrase or word - At the start of the sentence, we normally add an opening phrase or word that needs a comma. For instance: At first, I am not aware how to use comma properly., or However, this article had helped me understand the proper use of comma.
Quotation Marks
Quotation marks should not be used to give emphasis or for indirect quotations. If no one said the phrase or words, never use quotations marks.
5. The Fused Sentence & Inflated Sentences
Fused sentences are also called run-on sentences. This happens when two sentences are condensed together without proper punctuation or coordinating conjunction. Fused sentences can be long or short.
Inflated sentence, on the other hand, is another term for wordiness. If you need to say something to your readers, be direct to the point.
An inflating sentence with pointless fillers or excessive words only muddles with what you are trying to convey. Also, wordy sentences can only frustrate your readers.
You can avoid fused and inflating sentences by simplifying your sentence.
6. Tautologies
This is a useless repetition of a similar concept. Tautologies are common because of the wide choices of words available.
For example the sentence is: My neighbor is a single bachelor. This can be a big joke to your readers because a bachelor is always single.
Writers must avoid using tautologies to avoid repetition and monotony.