Posted on 09/28/2011 1:00:49 PM PDT by iowamark
Many brilliant people have some communication weak spots. Unfortunately, the reality is that written communication is a big part of business, and how you write reflects on you. Poor spelling and grammar can destroy a professional image in an instant.
Even if your job doesn't require much business writing, you'll still have emails to send and notes to write. And if you're looking for a job, your cover letters and resumes will likely mean the difference between getting the interview or not.
Bad grammar and spelling make a bad impression. Don't let yourself lose an opportunity over a simple spelling or grammar mistake.
Here are seven simple grammatical errors that I see consistently in emails, cover letters and resumes.
Tip: Make yourself a little card cheat sheet and keep it in your wallet for easy reference.
You're / Your
The apostrophe means it's a contraction of two words; "you're" is the short version of "you are" (the "a" is dropped), so if your sentence makes sense if you say "you are," then you're good to use you're. "Your" means it belongs to you, it's yours.
You're going to love your new job!
It's / Its
This one is confusing, because generally, in addition to being used in contractions, an apostrophe indicates ownership, as in "Dad's new car." But, "it's" is actually the short version of "it is" or "it has." "Its" with no apostrophe means belonging to it.
It's important to remember to bring your telephone and its extra battery.
They're / Their / There
"They're" is a contraction of "they are." "Their" means belonging to them. "There" refers to a place (notice that the word "here" is part of it, which is also a place – so if it says here and there, it's a place). There = a place
They're going to miss their teachers when they leave there.
Loose / Lose
These spellings really don't make much sense, so you just have to remember them. "Loose" is the opposite of tight, and rhymes with goose. "Lose" is the opposite of win, and rhymes with booze. (To show how unpredictable English is, compare another pair of words, "choose" and "chose," which are spelled the same except the initial sound, but pronounced differently. No wonder so many people get it wrong!)
I never thought I could lose so much weight; now my pants are all loose!
Lead / Led
Another common but glaring error. "Lead" means you're doing it in the present, and rhymes with deed. "Led" is the past tense of lead, and rhymes with sled. So you can "lead" your current organization, but you "led" the people in your previous job.
My goal is to lead this team to success, just as I led my past teams into winning award after award.
A lot / Alot / Allot
First the bad news: there is no such word as "alot." "A lot" refers to quantity, and "allot" means to distribute or parcel out.
There is a lot of confusion about this one, so I'm going to allot ten minutes to review these rules of grammar.
Between you and I
This one is widely misused, even by TV news anchors who should know better.
In English, we use a different pronoun depending on whether it's the subject or the object of the sentence: I/me, she/her, he/him, they/them. This becomes second nature for us and we rarely make mistakes with the glaring exception of when we have to choose between "you and I" or "you and me."
Grammar Girl does a far better job of explaining this than I, but suffice to say that "between you and I" is never correct, and although it is becoming more common, it's kind of like saying "him did a great job." It is glaringly incorrect.
The easy rule of thumb is to replace the "you and I" or "you and me" with either "we" or "us" and you'll quickly see which form is right. If "us" works, then use "you and me" and if "we" works, then use "you and I."
Between you and me (us), here are the secrets to how you and I (we) can learn to write better.
Master these common errors and you'll remove some of the mistakes and red flags that make you look like you have no idea how to speak.
My mother, rest her soul, used to constantly correct my grammar as a kid. I used to HATE it.Now, at 49......I am so thankful she cared enough to do so.
This thread should be a permanent fixture on this forum. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors here at FR make us look like a bunch of illiterate children.
Apostrophes drive me nuts. I think half the posters here at FR use them at the end of every other word.
It's a new trend for some reason. I didn't notice it until just a few years ago. I think people put apostrophes at the end of words that end in "s" to try to make themselves look smarter. The result is that they just look stupid.
Don't even get me started on "your" and "you're"
I took note that our secretary was sending out his business letters without correcting them. Very carefully, and with the boss’s approval, we got the secretary to clean up his letters without his knowledge...
Did you read the article? You put an unnecessary apostrophe at the end of the word "errors" but didn't use one for the word "its." Completely ass backwards.
The mailboxes were red, green, and brown -- OR -- The mailboxes were red, green and brown. (We have no clue how many there were ... or whether any of the mailboxes had more than one color. But we do know that only those three colors were used!)
The second comma is optional, but we do know there were more than two mailboxes, as you do not list two items without a conjunction.
My own, personal, peeve, concerns misuse of further/farther; it’s extremely common and very irritating.
This ad caused a lot of head-wagging when it came out. People said it would teach people to use “like” for “as.”
Illicit / Elicit
Discreet / Discrete
And let's not forget “lightening” instead of “lightning”.
I've only ever seen this one on the Net - people who write “noone” instead of “no one”. DRIVES ME INSANE.
Noone was the lead singer of Herman's Hermits. Learn the difference, people!
It should be a permanent fixture of some kind, but FR is no worse than the “norm.” You would be surprised at how many errors are made by professional writers and other authors.
Of course not! In that case, "that" is used as a pronoun rather than a conjunction for a dependent clause.
Or something like that. ;-p
You say you write for a living. Your angle on the following, please.
This morning’s WSJ, page C12:
“There are a couple of flaws in this strategy.”
“a couple”, while it may contain two or even three of some element members in acceptable everyday usage, IS singular, as indicated by the ‘a’ article. Therefore we ought to write “There is a couple”, no? But this is such a common error nowadays that I expect to hear arguments that such usage is correct. Is it? Double GRRRRRH!
“Mr Funeral Director, there is a bereaved couple stiffly awaiting you in your office”, and not “Mr Funeral Director there are a couple ...” etc! In the strategy above, there are some two or three flaws, but still, there is a single couple of those flaws, dammit! “There are a” is pidgin English in my opinion.
I figure that at least one other person read this piece beside the author, his editor. Hey, may I have the job of editor at the Wall Street Journal?
It's correct. English is full of exceptions, and collective nouns are often the source of these exceptions. My MLA style guide devotes no less than a page and a half to the word "couple" alone.
Conspirator by its very definition means more than one. So you are simply a conspirator...not a co-conspirator.
Opps/opp's
But when you're talking about counting foxhounds, it's worse. Foxhounds are always counted in pairs, a "couple", no plural, and when you report the total number it's described as "twelve couple" = 24 hounds, or in the case of an odd number "four and a half couple" = 9 hounds. As Winston Churchill said, "That is something up with which I will not put."
-PJ
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