17 Common Writing Problems

At The Content Authority we find common mistakes in submitted articles of new and veteran writers alike.  This is a list of seventeen common writing errors we find on this site.  If you’re interested in achieving higher tier rankings on The Content Authority, you would do well to have this list memorized and having  a habit of checking your work against it periodically.

Most style manuals, including APA and MLA, contain extensive guidelines for grammar, mechanics, punctuation, and other general writing concerns.  If you are interested in additional reading and study on writing well, a well reviewed book The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well.

  1. Pronoun–Antecedent Agreement. A pronoun must agree with its antecedent noun in number. A common error is using they to refer to a singular noun. It is incorrect to say, “A student was selected because they met the criteria for the study.” The correct form is “A student was selected because he or she met the criteria for the study” or “Students were selected because they met the criteria for the study.”
  2. Gender. Pronouns must also agree in gender with the noun they replace by being masculine, feminine, or neuter. This rule also applies to relative pronouns. The use of relative pronouns is restricted to “whom” for human beings only. “That” or “which” are used for animals and things but never for humans.
  3. Neuter pronouns (it) apply to animals unless they are named. If the gender of the individual animal is known use he or she as appropriate.
  4. Who or whom. The APA has a good trick for remembering when to use who or whom. If you can substitute he or she, who is correct; if you can substitute him or her, whom is the correct pronoun.
  5. Subject–Verb Agreement. A verb must agree in number (singular or plural) with the noun despite the number of intervening phrases.
  6. Do not use simple pronouns such as “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those” alone. To do so creates ambiguity in your work. Clarify the material by writing “this book,” “these students,” “that project” etc.
  7. In or Within? “In” means a person or object has moved toward the inside or holds a position of influence. Examples are “went in the house,” and “in the office.” The word “within” means of the interior, such as within the mind, within the next hour, or within the enclosure.
  8. That or Which? “That” is followed by material that is essential to a sentence. “Which” is followed by information that is informative but not essential to the sentence.
  9. Ending a sentence with a preposition. Avoid sentences such as “Whom do you want to go to the store with?” “At,” “by,” “with,” “from,” and “to” are the prepositions. .
  10. Dangling modifiers. A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies a subject, where the subject is not clearly stated. a. Incorrect usage: After eating dinner, the dishes were done. (The dishes are the subject of this sentence, yet the dishes did not eat dinner. Therefore, “after eating dinner” is a dangling modifier, a modifier without a subject.) b. Correct usage: After eating dinner, John did the dishes.
  11. Do not split infinitives. “To effectively use” is incorrect. The correct form is “to use effectively.”
  12. Dates. Form the plural of dates by adding an s. An apostrophe is not used. The correct form is 1960s, not 1960’s. To indicate date ranges use an en dash, not a hyphen. The correct form is 1960–1971, not 1960-1971.
  13. Titled or Entitled. “Entitled” means that you have personally given a name to something such as an article or a book. “Titled” means that another person has given a name to something such as an article or a book. For example, I entitled my article “Yes, the Little Things Count.” Williams titled his article, “Yes, the Little Things Count.”
  14. Do not use two hyphens or a single hyphen to indicate a dash. Generate the em dash —  by holding the alt key and typing 0151 on your keypad. An alternative is to go into the insert menu and select symbol. The em dash is one of the symbols you can insert into text. Make the en dash – by typing alt 0150. The en dash hyphenates two words of equal importance. Do not put a space before or after an em dash or en dash.
  15. Do not hyphenate prefixes. Prefixes include:
    • after
    • anti
    • bi
    • co
    • counter
    • equi
    • extra
    • infra
    • inter
    • intra
    • macro
    • mega
    • meta
    • micro
    • mid
    • mini
    • multi
    • non
    • over
    • post
    • pre
    • pro
    • pseudo
    • re
    • semi
    • socio
    • sub
    • super
    • supra
    • ultra
    • un
    • under
    You will see hyphens after prefixes very frequently but what you are seeing is incorrect. Do not copy such hyphenation because it is wrong no matter where you see it. There are very few times to use a hyphen after a prefix. One exception is if the word after the prefix is capitalized. Another exception to the rule is the case of the prefix ending with the same letter as the following word begins such as re-enter. Do not put a space between a prefix and the root word. It is semiautomatic not semi automatic.
  16. A power writer avoids the use of the “to be” verbs. Your work will always be passive if you use “am, is, are, was, were, been, being, be.” Use “to be” verbs sparingly. Strunk and White has some good examples of ways to write around to be verbs. Another rule is never use a colon after a “to be” verb.
  17. Do not take the spell and grammar checker in Word or any other word processing programs as gospel. Word is flawed and if you follow it blindly, you will be making mistakes you do not want in your work. For example, Word loves to hyphenate after every prefix. Use Word and other program spell and grammar checkers but use them with care. Word is good for quickly finding spelling errors, passive voice sections, sentence fragments, and punctuation errors (sometimes) etc. If you have doubt about a correction, look it up in a good style manual or grammar book. It is worth the time it takes.