Top 10 writing glitches
August 17, 2008 by Gary Schlee
In nearly three decades teaching writing courses and pouring over thousands of student stories, I’ve been subjected to plenty of grammatical and style missteps. Some of them reared their heads more often than others. Here’s a look at 10 prevalent violations:
1. Its vs. It’s. I doubt you’re particularly surprised by this one. It has plagued writers because common sense would love to nudge us to towards seeing the apostrophe as a possessive instead of its (not it’s!) role in a contraction. Okay, it’s (not its!) not logical. All the more reason to commit it to memory. It-apostrophe-s has only one meaning — a contraction for it is. Everything else is its.
2. Comma Splices. Sentence structure doesn’t appear to have the same palatability it once had. More and more students aren’t done once they’ve delivered their subject-verb-object content. Instead, they attach a comma to the hind end and launch into another discrete thought. And sometimes, they go at for a third or fourth time before the sentence(s) gets its period. Where is the phenomenon coming from? E-mail?
3. Overuse of ‘that’. I truly believe that the word ‘that’ is one that is used so much that it’s overwhelming. It would be nice to be able to develop a little Word macro that would flag each time that the word ‘that’ appears and ask: “Recite the sentence without the ‘that’. Does it have to be there? If yes, great. If no, kindly annihilate it.”
4. The ‘ize’ have it. Sure, in a business that loves to ’strategize’ and ‘prioritize’ everything, this is a tough one to avoid these days — some dictionaries have already caved in on the above examples. Still, it behooves effective corporate writers to take the trouble to see if the word actually exists. Then again, maybe I should just sanctionize the practice and move on.
5. Everyday vs. every day. This one is downright rampant and I blame advertising for it. Huge companies (McDonald’s and Loblaws supermarkets to name only two) are spending big dollars to install banners and run ads full of slogans that promise savings, quality, or freshness everyday (sic). Everyday is an adjective — that’s it. Otherwise, the copywriter should be choosing option two: ‘every day’. I’m waiting for organizations to start promising savings, quality or freshness everyweek or everymonth.
6. ‘Then’ instead of ‘than’. I keep hoping it’s a typo, but my confidence begins to sink when I’ve tripped over three or four of them in one story. That’s when I know it’s a bigger problem then I thought.
7. Verb creations. Whether we’re impacting shareholders or trashing parties, there’s something very leading edge about coining new verbs that are pedastalled (my word; I hope I’m the first to use it!) on nouns.
8. Cliches. Sorry I didn’t go the whole nine yards and include the accent over the ‘e’ on this puppy; it hurts me more than it hurts you. Sometimes I think cliches are hotter than a snake’s ass in a wagon rut — if they serve a purpose the writer can defend. Most times? Just a sign of lazy writing.
9. Use vs. Utilize. Past students can tell you this one was a particular Schlee bugbear. In most cases you don’t need to utilize ‘utilize’. Simply use ‘use’.
10. High school. If you’ve been raised on a diet of local sports coverage in your community paper, I’ll buy the excuse. This typo is almost the norm in collegiate sports reporting. Google the non-word ‘highschool’ and see what you get. The search engine behemoth simply ignores the yahoos who think the term is one word.
I’ll stop at 10, but I can’t resist adding two of my favourite malapropisms. On more than one occasion, students writing about compiling materials referred in stories to the ‘copulation of results’. Another student writing about the subject’s work in health care had me confused about the person’s work with ‘leopards’. It took me awhile to realize it was meant to be ‘lepers’.
6 Responses to “Top 10 writing glitches”
As a self-confessed word nerd and grammar fascist, I can never get enough of these lists, Gary. Proper use of language is a consistent theme on our PR blog at http://www.inmedialog.com.
Now if only the commission of these sins was restricted to students. Alas, too many business people, including far too many business communicators, commit them nearly early every time they put finger to keyboard.
Many people I’ve met since taking your writing classes know how much number nine means to me.
I bought Eats, Shoots and Leaves and Grammar Girl’s book a couple days ago!
Amen, Gary. Excellent list. I would add one more: random Capitalization!
My pet peeve is likewise “utilize” (and all the other “ize” words). It’s too bad that the people throwing these words around think it makes them sound smarter; it doesn’t. If only they would just aim to be understood! Speaking of malapropisms (which again seem to crop up in an effort to sound learned), I ran across this one: “he diffuses posturing.” After some pondering, I believe the writer meant to say “he eschews posturing,” which really isn’t much better!
Thanks to the Olympics, I’d add verbs the media is now using that will likely creep into student writing: she “podiumed” after she “medaled.”
And, one of my pet peeves (in thousands of student assignments I’ve evaluated) misuse of of the word “amount” for “number.”
I have to side with Donna on the capitalization point. Maybe it’s because I’m trained in CP style. I’d add Gen Y’s overuse of “like” and (on Christine’s point) the use of ridiculous jargon when plain language would suffice. George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” attacks the use of jargon and big words that are used to make the author sound intelligent, though they actually do the opposite. A great read.