The Ten Most Common Errors
Welcome to our Special Grammar Unit. Acadia English professors have identified ten of the most frequently occurring errors in student writing and have designed these quizzes to help you identify, understand and correct the ones that give you trouble.
| "What I know about grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of the sentence, as definitely and inflexible as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the subject photographed. Many people know camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences." - Joan Didion |
Listed below are the ten most common grammar errors found in student writing. Take one or all of the Preliminary Quizzes to determine your own strengths and weaknesses. Once you have identified your most common errors, click on the relevant errors listed below. Each page will help you recognize and correct grammar errors in your own writing. Take the Ten Quizzes to see how much you have learned. You can go to the Glossary for explanations of the grammar terms used.
- The Comma Splice
- Faulty Parallelism
- The Sentence Fragment
- Possessive Fault
- The Misplaced Modifier
- The Passive Voice
- Unclear Pronoun Reference
- The Run-on Sentence
- Subject Verb Agreement
- Wordiness
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"I have rewritten--often several times--every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers." - Vladimir Nabokov |