Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. I’m not sure about all of the questions posed by this example.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. If proofreaders use this technique, they’d catch more errors like this.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. I think if you read this text out loud, you’ll hear the problem.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
I’m not a fan of adding -ing to verbs, as I’ve said in “The ‘Be” test for writers.” However, I couldn’t tell you why it was wrong until I read Cut It Out: 10 Simple Steps for Tight Writing and Better Sentences by Laura Swart.
Here’s how Swart explains the use of what she identifies as the “progressive tense.”
…unless something is happening right now or over a period of time, use the simple present and simple past tenses (typically verbs ending in s and ed, respectively).
There’s some ambiguity in how to apply that rule. That’s why I like that Swart’s book provides multiple examples of when to use or omit the progressive tense.
However, I use a simpler rule. Does the sentence make sense if I don’t attach -ing to the verb? If so, I omit it. Shorter sentences are easier for readers to absorb.
What appears to be the progressive tense may actually be a gerund. That’s a noun formed by adding -ing to a verb. Grammarbook uses the example of “Walking is great exercise.”
Grammarbook also says, “It is helpful to recognize gerunds because if a noun or pronoun precedes a gerund, it is usually best to use the possessive form of that noun or pronoun.”
Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I link only to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.
If you find that you’ve made a mistake like this, you may develop a headache, too.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
I’m a little obsessive about proper usage, but there are plenty of holes in my knowledge of writing style. Thus, when I saw “all our funds,” it drove me to the internet to see if that should read “all of our funds.” My first observation: this seems to be a question mainly for English language learners. There don’t appear to be many established grammar or style gurus writing online about this topic.
Grammar Monster says to use “all” before any noun except a pronoun. For example, “all of us,” but “all the cheese.” In a sidebar, it says that “all of” is an indefinite pronoun, but “all” is an “indefinite adjective.” How’s that for a bit of grammar trivia?
Although I follow Grammar Monster on Twitter, the site isn’t one of my regular go-to resources. So, I delved into my trusty Garner’s Modern American Usage. Garner says that “all” is more formal than “all of.” He says one should use “all of” only before a pronoun—agreeing with Grammar Monster—or when a possessive noun follows, as in “Beyond all of Jones’ ego-stroking maneuvers.”
That’s all for now on my latest research.
Want to write well? Then, don’t fix your grammar. I don’t mean don’t ever fix your grammar. I mean that you shouldn’t fix your grammar too early in the writing process.
I thought about this when reading How to Write and Present Technical Information by Charles H. Sides. He says,
Often writers get overly concerned about the nit-picking details of grammar and punctuation in a document before they have got it written clearly.
Sides say this means we writers “will not change what we should, and the read will suffer for it.” In other words, the writer won’t fix big-picture errors of logic and organization.
I’m a big believer in starting the writing process by organizing your thoughts. That should be your top priority in the beginning. In the early stages, grammar is a distraction.
Here’s the process that I suggest:
Of course, it’s easier said than done to leave grammar tweaks to the end. One way I prevent myself from tinkering too soon is by writing the first drafts of some blog posts by hand, as discussed in “No batteries required: My favorite blogging technique.”
If you like more help developing your writing process, read my book Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, or take my on-demand financial blogging class.
Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I link only to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.
If you want people to pay attention to your content, not your writing, then using correct grammar isn’t always enough. I could go on about readability and other factors. However, in this post, I want to focus on grammar.
Sometimes correct grammar that looks wrong will distract your readers from your content. That happened to me earlier this year. I sent out a newsletter that included the following line: “Their using my Twitter name—my @name, @susanweiner—forces their tweet to my attention.”
Two readers responded with gentle messages suggesting that my line included a grammatical mistake. Both said that “Their” should be “they’re.” If you delete the parenthetical reference to my Twitter name, you can see that’s not a solution. It results in a sentence that doesn’t make sense: “They’re using my Twitter name forces their tweet to my attention.” I suppose it could work if changed to “They’re using my Twitter name to force their tweet to my attention.”
I checked with some grammar-savvy friends. They said, “Their” is correct with the gerund form of “use.” That’s explained in “Using the Possessive Case with Gerunds.”
However, my readers who cared enough to contact me made an important point. The way that I’d written that sentence prevented some readers from focusing on my message. In other words, I was correct, but I’d failed to communicate effectively.
With the help of my friends, I came up with some alternative ways of saying the same thing. I ran a poll in my newsletter to see which version my readers preferred.
The winner, with 50% of the votes, was “By using my name—@susanweiner—they’re forcing me to notice their tweet.” It was followed by:
Ouch! Nobody preferred my original sentence. This is a good reminder for me to slow down when I write. Still, I’m not sure what technique or rule would have alerted me to the problem with this sentence. I need to reflect on this.
One respondent said, “The loser tweeter appears to be singular. If so, ‘their’ is wrong. Use the correct singular pronoun, or ‘he’ for neutral.” Of course, the problem with that is that “he” will offend some readers. And “his or her” is clunky.
“Their” is increasingly accepted as a gender-neutral singular possessive. Still, its use distracts people who were taught that “their” is strictly plural.
I often use the workaround that I describe in “Plurals: your best friend for gender-neutral financial writing ” However, in the context of my original blog post, the losers were plural, making “their” correct. (Of course, my commenter lacked the context, so he or she didn’t know that.)
I appreciate all of my readers who correct me. Thank you!
You give me reason to reflect on my writing, and you often correct embarrassing mistakes. As a high schooler, I did not get a good education in correct grammar, as I discussed in “Confessions of a grammar ignoramus.” I still have a lot to learn.
Keep your comments coming!
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. If you can’t find what’s wrong with this, then try my read-out-loud technique.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
Can you spot what’s wrong in the Mistake Monday image below? Please post your answer as a comment.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading. However, I wonder if the author of this week’s item is a non-native speaker of English so this isn’t a proofreading problem. As a rusty, non-native speaker of Japanese, I sure would hate to be judged by the standards of native speakers.