Five writing mistakes everyone makes
04/May/2009 12:08 PM Filed in: On Editors &
WritersMistakes
Smart People Make
When I
started copyediting scholarly books several years
ago, I was astonished by the kinds of corrections I
needed to make most
frequently. For very
different reasons, the scholarly authors whose work I
was editing made the same kinds of errors my freshmen
students had made during the eight years
I taught composition.
Students make these errors either because they haven't mastered writing skills yet or because they don't put time into revising their work. The scholars make these errors because they're writing longer, more complicated sentences and, I'm assuming, having insights during the writing process itself. If a scholar realizes another brilliant point that can be made halfway through a sentence, the syntax sometimes can't keep up with the brain, and errors find their way into the text.
What are these five most common mistakes? They'll sound familiar to you:
Only this last problem is difficult for many people, even seasoned writers, to grasp. To give each of these problems the attention they deserve, I'll be writing about them one by one in upcoming posts.
Students make these errors either because they haven't mastered writing skills yet or because they don't put time into revising their work. The scholars make these errors because they're writing longer, more complicated sentences and, I'm assuming, having insights during the writing process itself. If a scholar realizes another brilliant point that can be made halfway through a sentence, the syntax sometimes can't keep up with the brain, and errors find their way into the text.
What are these five most common mistakes? They'll sound familiar to you:
- Problems with pronoun reference
- Dangling or misplaced modifiers
- Problems with parallel structure
- Wordiness
- Problems distinguishing between (and therefore punctuating) restrictive and nonrestrictive elements
Only this last problem is difficult for many people, even seasoned writers, to grasp. To give each of these problems the attention they deserve, I'll be writing about them one by one in upcoming posts.
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