Annoying Grammar Mistakes & How to Fix Them

In this article, I have compiled a list of some of the most annoying grammar mistakes that I see the most often and how to correct them. They are in no particular order.

1. “Could of/should of/would of” – The mistake here is the use of the word “of”. The correct way to say this is to use the word “have”, and the proper sentence would read “I could have eaten.” I believe that people tend to assume that the word to use is “of” because of what they hear in daily speech. When we speak, we do not enunciate every letter of every word, so words get squished together into contractions. The commonly used contraction for the phrase “could have” is “could’ve”, which sounds like “could of” when spoken aloud. However, “could of” is still incorrect, and should not be used. The same is true of “should have” and “would have”, of course. This is something I distinctly remember learning in early elementary (primary) school, people!

2. Poor apostrophe usage – Apostrophes seem to pose difficulty often for English speakers. However, the rules for their use are quite simple, and I have trouble understanding how anyone can mess them up. From what I’ve seen, people tend to use apostrophes correctly when it comes to contractions, but there is an issue when it comes to using them for their other major use, as indicators of possession.

   Apostrophes are used to indicate possession. If one noun owns a noun or nouns, an “‘s” is attached to the end of the first noun. For example, if Charlie owns a dog, it is Charlie’s dog. If multiple nouns own a noun or nouns, an apostrophe is tacked onto the end of the already plural form of the first nouns. For example, if some girls own a house, it is the girls’ house. If the plural form of the noun is irregular and does not end in an “S”, an “‘s” is added to the end, as is evident with the men’s house. If more than one person owns something and you would like to name each one of them, the “‘s” is placed only after the last person is named. For example, you should say, “that is Charlie, Sam, and Max’s dog”.

   Apostrophes are NEVER used simply to make a noun plural.

3. Joining two sentences with a comma – When you have two relatively short sentences, it is common to want to combine them somehow so as not to sound choppy in your writing. One example of this is the sentences, “I ate cake” and “it was good”. I ate cake. It was good. That doesn’t sound so great, right? Well, there are two ways that you can join these sentences, and “I ate cake, it was good” is not one of them. You cannot just place a random comma between the two sentences; that is not how commas work!

   Instead, you can combine the sentences using either a conjunction (“and”, “but”, “or”, etc.) or a semicolon (;). In this specific case, you could write either “I ate cake and it was good”, or “I ate cake; it was good”. Each is equally correct, and each is infinitely more correct than combining the two with a comma and nothing else. A comma may be necessary to join the two sentences, depending on which conjunction you choose to use (e.g. “or”, “but”), but it can never be used alone to join them.

4. “But” and commas – Not many people seem to have trouble with this one, but enough do that it gets annoying. If you would structure a sentence like this, “I ate cake but, it did not taste good”, you are wrong. You are on the right track, because at least you recognize that a comma must be used with the word “but”, but you have placed it incorrectly. When using “but” in this sense, there must always be a comma before it. The correct sentence would read, “I ate cake, but it did not taste good”. Even if you would pause in speaking after the word “but”, a comma is necessary before it.
5. Its vs. it’s – This is an extremely common mistake that is also extremely easy to understand. You just need to memorize an easy rule. “Its” is the one word that defies the laws of apostrophes when it comes to possession. “It’s” is the contraction for the phrase “it is”, and “its” is the possessive form. For example, if we are talking about a dog and its bone, we would say, “it’s the dog’s bone” and “the dog loves its bone”. Understand? Thought so.