Easy Ways to Avoid Grammar Errors
Common Grammar Mistakes & Simple Hints to Remember English Rules
Jun 16, 2009
If you have specific grammar woes that plague you, you are not alone. Many people have problems with the same rules. Sometimes, all you need is a hint or two to help you quickly and easily figure out what is needed in a sentence.
In a previous article, we reviewed some grammar hints on Affect versus Effect, Your versus You’re, and Don’t versus Doesn’t.
Below are some more common grammar mistakes and simple ways to overcome them.
Its Versus It’s
There are two different ways to look at these words to help you remember which to use when. “Its” is a possessive pronoun, just like the words “my” and “her.” These kind of pronouns indicate ownership or “possession.” For example, if a person says, “You are welcome to use my pen,” we know the pen belongs to her; it is in her possession. Possessive pronouns never have an apostrophe.
An easy way to remember this is with the possessive pronoun “his.” You would never write, “This is hi’s car.” It is correct to write, “This is his car.” In the case of “it,” you would similarly write, “The snake hatched out of its egg.” Some people possibly find it confusing because we would write, “This is Heather’s desk,” and the apostrophe followed by “s” in that case does indicate possession. Just remember that “Heather” is not a pronoun. (Don't know what a pronoun is? See that section in the article of Parts of Speech.)
It also helps if you think of the contraction rule: an apostrophe (‘) stands in the word to indicate that something is missing. Contractions are a combination of two words, and the apostrophe means one or more letters is gone. Substitute the two words that “it’s” stands for to test it in your sentence. See the following example:
- Someone said it’s snowing outside.
- Someone said it is snowing outside.
Substituting the two words for the contraction makes sense, so we know that “it’s” is correct in this sentence.
These two methods (looking at possessive pronouns and remembering how contractions work) should help you decide in any situation whether you should use “its” or “it’s.”
Have Versus Of
Here is another tricky contraction problem. Sometimes people will write the phrases “could of,” “would of,” and “should of” when they really mean “could've,” “would've,” and “should've.” The only reason this is a problem is because sometimes the clipped form of “have” sounds like “of.” “Of,” though, is a preposition. Here is an example using both forms:
- I could of eaten candy.
- I could have eaten candy.
The second sentence is correct. Remember that, with a preposition, you’re looking for a prepositional phrase that follows. A prepositional phrase will never be followed with a verb in the form you see here ("eaten"--which is technically referred to as a “past participle”). A prepositional phrase using “of” would be something like this: “The cake was made of flour, sugar, and milk.”
The easiest way to avoid this mistake is to remember that could, would, and should will always be followed with “have” and never with “of.”
Whom Tricks
Sometimes it seems like “who” can be used anywhere in a sentence, but that’s not always the case. Basically, “who” is a subject and “whom” is an object. Now that might not be simple for everyone to understand, but here is a trick almost anyone can use: “He” is a subject and “him” is an object. Notice that both “whom” and “him” (both objects) end with the letter “m,” and you can substitute the word “him” for whom. If the sentence still works, then you have made the right choice. The problem is sometimes sentences seem odd when “whom” becomes involved; to make sure you made the right decision, you have to rearrange the sentence. Here are three examples:
Correct use of “who”:
- I know who called.
- I know he called.
Correct use of “whom”:
- Whom did you go to the store with?
- For the “him” to make sense, we have to rearrange the sentence: “You did go to the store with him (whom)” or “Did you go to the store with him (whom)?”
Book example:
- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
- Instead of saying “For him the bell tolls,” we might rearrange the sentence and say, “The bell tolls for him.”
This technique may not help for all your "whom" problems, but it will help with a lot of them.
Recognizing Problems on Your Own
You’ll find that when you continually correct these kinds of errors, you will get better at recognizing them. Soon, the correct form will be second nature to you. Sometimes all a person needs is a simple hint to help her correct her own errors. Being aware of common mistakes is a good place to start down that path.
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