Grammar

lack of parallelism

words, phrases, or clauses in a list or series do not maintain the same grammatical form, making sentences confusing or awkward

• The manager protested loudly & with emotion → The manager protested loudly & emotionally

incorrect noun/pronoun case

Pronoun Error

occurs when a pronoun is used in the wrong grammatical form (subjective, objective, or possessive) for its function in the sentence

• he = who

• him = whom him “with” = whomever

• his = whose

Possessive Form before Gerund

-ing acting as a noun

• Their playing professionally past the age of 40 is unusual.

• He advised against a person’s carrying on in society.

lack of subject verb agreement

subject and verb in a sentence do not match in number, meaning a singular subject is paired with a plural verb, or vice versa

• The box of cookies are on the table → The box of cookies is on the table

• Each of my friends are coming → Each of my friends is coming

dangling/misplaced element

a modifier should be placed as close as possible to the word it modifies; a dangling modifier appears to modify the wrong word or no word at all because the word it should logically modify is missing

• Flying low over the treetops, a herd of elephants charged into our view

  • Who is flying over the trees? Us or elephants

• Arriving at the theater an hour late, the seats were taken

  • Who is arriving at the theater late? Us or the seats?

fragment

an incomplete thought, a group of words punctuated as a sentence but missing either a subject, a verb, or a complete thought

• Running in the park

  • Who is running

• The boy with the red hat

  • What is the boy doing

faulty punctuation of restrictive/nonrestrictive element

use a comma to set off parenthetical expressions → Is the info essential for identifying the noun it modifies (restrictive) or just adds detail (nonrestrictive)

• My brother, who lives is London, is visiting next week

  • Test by removing the element

  • If removing it obscures the meaning/changes what the sentence is abt → restrictive

  • If removing it doesn’t change the meaning/identity of the noun → nonrestrictive

• Which = nonrestrictive

• That = restrictive

faulty/vague reference

a pronoun does not clearly and unambiguously refer to a specific noun, leaving the reader to be confused about the intended meaning

• The form says you must mail the entries by June 1 → The form says contestants must mail the entries by June 1

run-on

two or more independent clauses are joined without proper punctuation or conjunctions

• I went to the store, I bought some milk → comma splice

words commonly confused

words that sound/spelled similarly but have different meanings and are frequently misused

• affect/effect

• advice/advise

wordiness

the use of more words than necessary to express an idea

• My research dealt with studying different metals → My research studied different metals

unnecessary passive voice

uses a verb constitution with a form of “to be” and a past participle

• A roar was given by the crowd → The crowd roared

• You’ve been had → Someone has had you

incorrect tense

when the time frame of a verb’s action doesn’t align with the sentence’s context

• We were on the way to school, suddenly the sky turns dark → We were on the way to school, suddenly the sky turned dark

lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement

pronoun does not match the noun it replaces in number, gender, or person

• The women’s soccer team drove three hours for her/their game

• I bought the lunch for us/we