In the 21st century, English language has become an indispensable part of our life. All communications viz. newspapers, magazines, internet posts and even text books are primarily available in the English language.
In corporate world, you are not only judged by your appearance and ethics but also by your English usage. Words and phrases that sound fine in your head might not be grammatically correct. You tend to erroneous unknowingly. A person with a knack for English grammar will immediately get an idea about your conceptual clarity.
Not only in day-to-day life, English grammar concepts come handy in competitive and entrance exams, namely, Banking, SSC, law entrances, MBA entrances, GRE & GMAT and even campus placement tests.
Let’s go through top 10 English grammar mistakes. Let’s hope you can learn from some of these famous mistakes.
- Misplaced apostrophes
Many of you get confused while using an apostrophe(‘). An apostrophe is used to make plural of the word or to indicate possession. It is also used to compress words.
The rules are:
- To indicate possession, the apostrophe is placed before the ‘s’. For instance, “The boy’s horse.”
- To indicate possession in a plural form, put the apostrophe after the ‘s’. For example, “The boys’ horse.”
- To indicate a contracted form of words. For example, “should not = shouldn’t”
- Your/you’re
- The usage of ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ is generally asked in entrance examinations in the form of spot the error or sentence correction questions.
- See the difference? “Your” is possessive and “you’re” is compressed form of “you are”.
For instance: Your ball – indicates that ball is yours
You’re smart – means you are smart
- Its/it’s
- This is another common mistake. “Its” shows possession in pronoun form and “it’s” is a short form of “it is.”
- There is absolutely no such word as its‘.
For instance: It’s futile to chase tiger for it’s footprints.
- Would/should
- This common mistake and confusion to use these three words is made frequently.
- In competitive exams, questions pertaining to usage of these words are featured to test your conceptual clarity and knowledge of tenses.
The rules are:
- Should is used to give advice.
- Would points out to actions that repeated in the past. It also means ‘used to’.
For instance: You should chew your food properly. (‘Should’: giving advice) During summer, we would go swimming. (‘Would’: used to go)
- There/their/they’re
Let’s see the difference in the usage of these three words.
The rules are:
- “There” is used as a pronoun to describe a place.
- “Their” indicates possession.
- Obviously, “they’re” is short form of “they are”.
For instance: Their car, there are chocolates on the table, they’re rich
- Amount/number
We often tend to get confused while representing countable and non-countable nouns. Here are a few rules describing that.
The rules are:
- “Amount” refers to a non-countable commodity, which includes water, liquids, etc.
- “Number” refers to countable things like flowers, birds, plants, etc.
- To/two/too
Let’s understand when and where to use these words.
The rules are:
- “To” is an infinitive form of a verb. It is also used to indicate direction.
- “Too” means also and is used to indicate a large quantity of something.
- “Two” refers to the number 2.
- Then/than
“Then” and “than” are probably confusing because they sound similar.
The rules are:
- “Than” is used to compare people, quantities.
- “Then” is used to indicate sequence of events.
- Me/I
- “I” is used as the subject of a sentence, while “me” is used as object.
- As a rule, “I” comes before the verb and “me” comes after it.
For instance: I am playing cricket.
The work was done by me.
- Who/whom/Whose
The rules are:
- “Who” refers to the subject of a sentence, hence it is a subject pronoun. It is used for doer of the action.
- “Whom” refers to the object of a sentence. It is used for the receiver of the action.
- “Whose” is used to indicate possession.
For instance: Who is your sister?
Whom did you invite to your party?
Whose watch is this?
After reading this post, you must have got a clear picture about usage of various words.
