Grammar is complex, so it's easy to get things wrong. While it's fine for errors to creep into your emails or finance reports from time to time, regularly making mistakes can undermine your professional credibility.
So, here are a few tips for avoiding some common grammatical errors:
- Run-on sentences
- "Number” and "amount”
- "Who” and "whom”
- Dangling participles
- Placement of "only”
A run-on sentence contains two or more complete statements that are incorrectly linked with a comma and/or that should be separated by a full stop. An example of a run-on sentence is "Paper tax returns are becoming a thing of the past, HMRC now accepts tax returns online.”
A grammatically correct version of this sentence is "Paper tax returns are becoming a thing of the past. HMRC now accepts returns online.”
This one isn't too tricky once you get the hang of it. Things that you can count should be described as a number, not an amount. If you can't count it, use amount. For example, "A small number of clients have complained” (not a large amount of clients), or "There is a small amount of milk left” (not a small number of milk).
These two words tend to trip up a lot of people. Basically, "who” is the subject of a verb (a word describing an action), whilst "whom” is the object (the person or thing the action affects).
Reuters' style guide suggests that you can work out which to use by substituting "he” or "him” for "who” or "whom”. If he is correct then use who, but if him is correct, use whom. Easy!
For example, "He wrote that finance report” is correct, not "Him wrote that finance report”, so we would say, "Who wrote that book?”.
A dangling participle modifies the wrong noun. Or in plain English, the subject of the sentence is implied but it isn't explicit.
The following sentence features a dangling participle: "To improve their results, the exams were retaken.” This sentence reads as if the exams are trying to improve their own results.
Instead, you could say, "The accounting students improved their exam results by retaking them.”
The modifier "only” should sit nearest the thing it is describing.
For example, if you want to suggest that it is not necessary to invite every manager in the company to your meeting, you should say, "We should invite only senior members of the management team to the meeting” not "We should only invite senior members of the management team to the meeting”.
In the second sentence, "only” modifies "invite”, incorrectly suggesting that you might do something other than invite senior management to the meeting.
Can you think of any more common mistakes? Share any tips or tricks that you use to avoid common grammatical errors, in the comments section.
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