Do you ever look at a text and wonder why it just doesn't make sense? Here are four sets of words that are commonly mixed up in English, and one other common grammar error to avoid.
"Your" is a possessive pronoun, as in "your book" (the book belongs to you).
"You're," on the other hand, is a contraction of "you are." It's confusing because apostrophes are commonly used to indicate possession. If you're ever in doubt, write your sentence without contractions and edit it afterwards.
"Its" is a possessive pronoun, as in "its colour" (or "the colour of that thing).
"It's" is a contraction of "it is." As with "your vs you're," write your sentence without contractions if you need to double-check things!
“There” is used many ways, including as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no hope”).
“Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Always do the “that’s ours!” test—are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there.
"They're" is like "it's" or "you're", and is a contraction of "they are."
“Affect” is a verb, as in “Your ability to communicate clearly will affect your income immensely.” “Effect” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s low income on a child’s future is well documented.”
One way to remember this is "A for Action" - since "affect" is a verb!
By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick a “the” in front of a verb. While some people do use “effect” as a verb (“a strategy to effect a settlement”), they are usually lawyers, and you should therefore ignore them if you want to write like a human.
(Or, if you want to avoid this problem altogether, just use the word "impact," which can be either a verb or a noun and has roughly the same meaning as "affect" and "effect"!)
The dangling participle may be the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes. Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, but it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.
Check out these two examples from Tom Sant’s book Persuasive Business Proposals:
After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.
Uhh… keep your decomposing brother away from me!
Now check out these two:
Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential.
Hmmm… robotic copy written by people embedded with circuit boards. Makes sense.
The problem with both of the above sentences is that the participial phrase that begins the sentence is not intended to modify what follows next in the sentence. However, readers mentally expect it to work that way, so your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, as well as your readers.
This guide was compiled using information from the article "5 grammar mistakes that make you look dumb" http://www.copyblogger.com/5-common-mistakes-that-make-you-look-dumb/
Test your knowledge of how to use some common words that sound similar but have different meanings.
This infographic-styled webpage by The Oatmeal offers some commonly misspelled words, and some fun ways to remember the correct spelling.
This guide was created/compiled by Amanda Wills and last updated by Claire Pienaar in 2021. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY NC SA 4.0 International License.