MISTAKE MONDAY for May 27: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.

MM in-place in place

 

 

 

 

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for April 29: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.

Sigh. I see this mistake too often.

MM icon's icons

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for April 15: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.

This mistake is subtle. It took me years to absorb that this is considered a mistake by most proofreaders.

MM highly-anticipated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for February 4: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. I see this mistake way too often.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for January 28: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. This is a subtle mistake.

 

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for December 17: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.

I don’t know why people make this mistake. What are they thinking?

MM let's lets

 

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for November 12: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.

This is another mistake that spell-checking software should catch.

MM Ive I've

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for October 15: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. Reading this out loud may help you spot the problems.

decsions decisions

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

MISTAKE MONDAY for September 10: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?

Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. There’s more than one problem.

Australian's Australians

 

 

 

I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.

Why there’s no apostrophe in writers room

Social Media – Untitled DesignI’ve long wondered why there is no apostrophe in words like “writers room,” ‘homeowners association,” or “teachers college.”

Is the noun descriptive or possessive?

I found a good explanation in Emmy J. Favilla’s A World Without “Whom.”

Do not use an apostrophe when a word is primarily descriptive rather than possessive…. The word is acting more like an adjective than a possessive noun.

Grammar Girl agrees with this approach in her post on “Apostrophes.” Here’s how she explains the lack of an apostrophe in farmers market:

The market is used by the farmers, populated by the farmers, but generally not owned by the farmers. So it seems reasonable to conclude that you don’t use an apostrophe because the word farmers is there to identify the type of market. It’s acting like an adjective.

Exception for nouns that don’t end in s

There’s a word for these nouns that act as adjectives. They’re “attributive nouns,” according to Amy Einsohn in The Copyeditor’s Handbook.

And here’s a twist in the use of punctuation with attributive nouns. “If the plural form of the head noun does not end in s, however, the apostrophe is always used: the people’s republic, a children’s hospital,” says Einsohn.

English grammar sure is complicated.

 

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