Bad Grammar – 5 Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Whether you’re writing a BLOG post, an article, or a sales and marketing piece, odds are there is someone going through it sentence by sentence to find your mistakes. They do this for several reasons, one of which is to make themselves feel better. You can protect yourself from these self-proclaimed Grammar Police by recognizing some of the most common mistakes and learning how to fix them.
Bad Grammar is Most Likely Not What You Think It is
Most people think of the term bad grammar and assume that it is all encompassing of misspelling, poor comma placement, and run-on-sentences among may other things. This is generally because most people don’t know the difference between grammar and mechanics. Grammar is a system and structure of language in general. We use grammar to communicate our thoughts in an understandable and coherent way. Mechanics are the rules that oversee the structure. The mechanics includes capitalization, how we use punctuation, or proper spelling of words. With grammar context is important. Because of that fact, grammar is a little more fluid than we tend to think. The goal of the writing will always help determine what words to use and how to use them. Mechanics is something that doesn’t change. The correct spelling of words, what words should be capitalized, and where we use commas is something that we can all learn. Basically, grammar is something you have to think about on a project by project basis. Mechanics has a set of hard rules that we should follow in every situation.
1 Subjects and Verbs that Agree in Number
One of the most obvious examples of bad grammar is when the subject and the verb are written in plural and singular forms in the same sentence. This means that if you use a plural noun, you need to use a plural verb. Conversely you also need to use a singular verb with a singular noun. Example: The dog barks, and the cats meow. There is one dog so he barks and several cats so they meow. The easies way to make sure you have your subjects and verbs in agreement is this:
- Singular nouns do not usually end in S and singular verbs usually do. (ex: dog/barks)
- Plural nouns usually do end with an S and plural verbs usually don’t. (ex: cats/meow)
While there are exceptions to this rule, because language is not always logical, most of the time, this can help you keep things in agreement.
2 Shifting Tenses
Past, Present, and Future are the three tenses used in the English language. Tenses are used to show when something occurs. It either occurred in the past, is occurring presently, or is going to occur at some time in the future. Bad Grammar in this case is not keeping the same tense in a paragraph or document. Sometimes people shift tense in the same sentence. Example: I played soccer last night. I will be sore when I play too much soccer. Playing too much soccer is not good for me, but I will do it anyway. Question: When did I play soccer? The first sentence is written in past tense, the second sentence uses future tense verbs, and the third sentence uses a mix of present and future. None of these examples are technically incorrect, however they are bad grammar. Grammar is intended to help you clearly communicate your idea. The idea in the sentences above is unclear because of the tense shifting through the sentences. You can use all three tenses within the same document, but each tense needs to be explained and used with intent so that your readers can follow along easily. One fix for this example could be to write the sentences in past tense, and rewrite the second one for clarity. “I played soccer last night. I was sore today because I played too much soccer. Playing too much soccer wasn’t good for me, but I did it anyway.”
3 Dangling Modifiers
One of the most common grammatical mistakes is the dangling modifier.This happens when the modifying phrase is not attached to the subject on the sentence. The reason it is so common is that it is very easy to do without realizing it. Obviously we understand what we are trying to say when we write. Because of this inherent understanding, we write from a perspective that does not take into consideration that the reader may not have the same knowledge at the start. Example: After looking at the party venue, the choice was still not clear. The modifying phrase is after looking at the party venue. Who is the subject? If your answer is the choice, you are correct. However the choice is not who looked at the venue. Then who did? Based on the sentence your readers will have no idea because the modifier has nothing to modify. The fix for this is simple. After looking at the party venue, the band was still unclear about their choice.” Now we have the band looking at the venue as the subject of the sentence and they are still unclear. The band is the subject because he sentence is about them. They perform the action not the choice as in the example. Boom, we have good grammar.
4 Passive and Active Voice
A favorite red flag of the Yoast SEO plugin is the active vs passive voice. Every one makes this mistake in everything we write. That’s okay because it is not always bad grammar.When it confuses the message in the writing, it becomes bad grammar. Overusing passive voice creates a much harder to reading experience, which is why Yoast like to and suggests you adjust your writing. Active Voice: When the subject of the sentence performs the verb. Example: The player passes the ball. Passive Voice: When the subject has an action performed on it, not by it. Example: The ball was passed by the player. The player is still performing the action, but in the second sentence the player is not the subject. The player is the object of the preposition by and the object of a preposition cannot be the subject of a sentence. The ball is the subject and passively receives the the action of the verb.
5 Parallelism
Parallelism is the notion that everything in a sentence is consistent in style and tense with the rest of the sentence. Example that is not a parallel sentence: My partner loves eating, dancing, and to play with her children. The verbs eating and dancing are both in the present tense. To play, however is in the infinitive form. Even if you don’t know what those mean, you can tell that the sentence is hard to read, even though you understand what it means. Examples of a parallel sentence: My partner loves eating, dancing and playing with her children. – My partner loves to eat, dance, and play with her children. Fairly easy right? Just remember to line things up correctly. One way to catch this issue is to read it aloud. We generally speak in parallel, so it is obvious when spoken.
Conclusion
No matter what it is you are writing, or what level you are writing at, it is inevitable that these situations will arise. You don’t need to be a teacher to recognize bad grammar and know how to fix it. All you need is to be aware of it and your purpose in writing. I had a teacher in college that told me that it was a good thing that I write how I talk. Now I understand what she meant and why she said it. I still perform these checks anytime something I write doesn’t sound good aloud.
