Common Writing Mistakes and How to Fix Them

by Jennifer Tribe

As someone who loves to read, I avidly consume the content that swirls around me every day: newsletters, discussion forum posts, newspapers, books, e-mails, web sites, advertisements and signs. With an editor’s eyes, I often see mistakes in these texts. Below are a handful of spelling, grammar and formatting errors that I see regularly.

Do not use apostrophes when creating plurals
The plural forms of words do not require an apostrophe before the s. The most common errors are made with abbreviations such as CD and VCR. The proper way to pluralize these terms is CDs and VCRs. Dates that refer to a span of years, such as the 1970s, do not require an apostrophe either.

Apostrophes replace missing characters in dates
One purpose of an apostrophe is to indicate where characters have been removed in a contraction or shortened form. For example, the apostrophe in don’t indicates the o has been removed between the n and the t. The apostrophe is used in a similar manner for dates. Thus 1970 becomes ’70, with the apostrophe properly indicating the missing 19. Where people seem to get the most mixed up is when pluralizing shortened dates -- but remember the previous rule: no apostrophe is required for a plural. Therefore “the ‘70s” is the proper way to refer to the decade, not 70’s, as is commonly seen.

A lot is two words
I see this rule broken...a lot. Allot, as in “I will allot you a fair share of the treasure,” is one word with two l’s. But the term that means "a great deal" is two words.

[Keen readers will note that I just spelled l’s with an apostrophe. What gives? It’s a plural so shouldn’t have an apostrophe, right? Well, nobody said English was easy. When pluralizing single lowercase letters, the proper way is with an apostrophe.]

Spell out acronyms on first reference
“I sent the reviewer an ARC.” Know what that means? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Never assume that a reader will know what your jumble of acronyms means. Always spell out the term in full the first time it is used and indicate in brackets the short form you will be using on subsequent references. My sentence would therefore read, “I sent the reviewer an Advance Reading Copy (ARC).”

Use shorter words whenever possible
It seems to be a curse of the modern business age that words get larded up with fancy and unnecessary syllables to make them sound more important. Thus we get word monsters such as utilize, orientate and wastage instead of the correct and very serviceable use, orient and waste. Avoid the frills. Use the plainer and more direct words for greater power and cleaner writing.

Flesh it out, don’t flush it
If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say they were going to “flush out” an idea, I’d be a rich woman today. Although this is a common mistake, it’s easy to remember the correct term if you just think for a second about the metaphor you are using. To flesh something out is to put meat on the bare bones of an idea. To flush, well, are you really sure you want to say that about your concept?

Make your writing as clean as it can be. All it takes is a few seconds to review your text for some of these common errors.


© 2005-2007 Jennifer Tribe
Jennifer Tribe is a principal at Highspot Inc. Want to self-publish a book, produce an audio program, launch a seminar? Highspot can help transform your great ideas into lasting knowledge products.

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