ashes and hyphens? Check out this short guide.
- Ready to test yourself? Purdue OWL has some punctuation exercises to test how much you learned.
All of the punctuation marks in the above list and resources are an extremely important part of English. They’re so important that some of the most common writing errors in English can be fixed just by correcting the punctuation.
Below, we’ll look at five of the most common errors, so you don’t have to make them anymore!
5 Common English Writing Errors You Don’t Have to Make!
1. Using quotation marks for emphasis.
Quotation marks are used to show something that someone has already said or written, to set titles apart and to refer to specific words and letters (if you look carefully, you’ll find examples of that in this article).
They are not used to emphasize (stress) a word.
In fact, one final use for quotation marks turns this usage of quotation marks into a pretty funny mistake.
To understand this, let’s first learn about the wonderful “air quotes.” (The quotes around “air quotes” are being used to refer to a specific phrase. Slang, expressions and other commonly-spoken language sometimes appear in quotes when written.) Here’s Joey from “Friends” adorably misusing them.
“Air quotes” are quote-like gestures that you make in the air with your fingers when speaking. They’re a way of putting quotation marks around words without writing them down. Air quotes are often used to show that you don’t actually mean what you’re saying, or to indicate sarcasm. This is a use of quotation marks that can appear in written language, too.
For example, if you say or write that someone “accidentally” took something, you’re saying they really took it on purpose.
That’s why, if you write to beware of the “dog,” it’s similar to including a wink. The “dog” might really be 20 years old and can barely stand up, or it might actually be a cat! Likewise, “cheese” burgers definitely don’t have cheese (and we don’t want to know what they really contain).
To emphasize a word, you can italicize it, or put it in bold lettering. You can also underline it, or even write it in ALL CAPS. (Just be aware that ALL CAPS is not acceptable in formal writing, and is often considered annoying, so be careful!) But please, don’t use quotation marks for emphasis.
While we’re on the topic of quotation marks, here are three quick things to remember:
- Commas and periods go inside the closing quotation mark.
“I don’t really know what that means,” Joey said.
- Question marks and exclamation points go inside the closing quotation mark if they’re part of the quote.
He exclaimed, “I hate pastrami!”
When they’re not a part of the quote, they go outside the quotes.
Have you ever seen the movie “Gone with the Wind”?
- Colons, semicolons and dashes always go outside the closing quotation mark.
I had two goals for my “me day”: sleeping, and sleeping some more.
“Me day” is another example of a common spoken phrase referring to something specific (in this case, a day someone has set aside for themselves).
Breaking even these small rules can cause confusion. Is the title of the movie a question (“Gone with the Wind?”), or a statement (“Gone with the Wind”)? Watch out for those quotation marks!
2. Confusing plurals with possessives.
It’s easy to understand why many people have trouble with apostrophes. They can be confusing!
Instead, let’s start with plurals. Making something plural means turning it into more than one single thing. A cat becomes “many cats.” A single class turns into “a few classes.” Most nouns simply require you to add “-s” or “-es” to the word, with a few special rules for nouns that end in certain letters (you can see more information about that here). But there’s one fact that always remains true: you never need an apostrophe to turn a word into a plural.
So why do you need apostrophes? To show that something belongs to something else—in other words, to show possession. A toy mouse belonging to a cat is “the cat’s toy mouse.” A house that belongs to your friend is “your friend’s house.”
Many people start to get confuse