Topic: English writing mistakes you might be doing! (Read 2778 times)

and we also have the not so obvious ones like: should in case: The correct usage is either should or in case

Thanks sir. Since I am also getting a lot of mistakes and I am not that good in English Language, I find this post so helpful not only for me but only for the others

this post is very good for learning, and this post will help me a lot in correct writing

Most tips could be replaced by "use a spellchecker"

this is really a massive write-up and it will increase the users grammar Mp3 Download thanks lot

Thanks for putting that list up. It is sure to help many people that do not have English as their primary language. They say English is the hardest language to learn.

thanks man this post helps me a lot with the grammar

I use grammarly and it corrects all of my writing mistakes by the way.

Not really. I made it out in 8 hours. It is mostly because I was thinking about every single mistake since I first saw them.

Nice, you have so much time to get this list.... Bravo

List updated.

Thanks mate. This is a great help for the community. There are people here including me that want to earn but can't speak and write English in proper way. Even pure blooded Englishmen make the same mistakes. The thing is we grow and we learn through time here inside and out.

In your advice there is a good idea and it is worth trying even to me. In the absence of knowledge of spelling, eh, this will facilitate the task.

But you try to write exactly as you think and say. This should help, because all the same you are talking with your hands, not the full set of words.

Decent guide.  I'm a native speaker and I appreciate that English can be a difficult language to get into, especially since the rules and logic of it don't really make any sense.  For logic, I prefer German.

These mistakes are fine if you make a post which is reasonable and contributes to the topic though.  English is only a minor part of what makes a post good unless you're doing a post in which you're trying very hard to look professional (like an ANN thread for a new altcoin).

I constantly forget to put punctuation marks and from this it becomes hard to read. I'm not sure that my written one will be able to understand.

Bump.

I don't want to defeat ignorance, because these mistakes aren't made out of ignorance, they are made unintentionally. There are a lot of these "tutoring/training" courses, especially for English, do you see them help any?

To be honest, I don't know why they make such mistakes. However, I guess it's because of sound. The 'o' letter in 'Lose' is pronounced a long o (oo), thus people mistake it for 'loose'. And the problem is: it's hard to change their mind.

Not all are corrected by a spell checker – logical mistakes like it's and its, or your and you're would seem correctly written for a spell checker, therefore, they are the commonly mistaken ones even if one is using a spell checker. By the way, all languages, nationalities, and countries are written with an initial uppercase letter, hence, it should be English.

Can you tell me why it is confusing?
You should approach it like this:
Word: Strategy.
First/initial letter: S, hence, a consonant letter.
Article: a

This should take less than a second in your mind to write.

almost all your mistakes are easily corrected with a spell checker, like most browsers already have if your OS is in english

and the a/an rule is confusing

is a strategy or an strategy correct?

an error made more by native speakers is write loose instead of lose

why?

These courses are probably very positive training. Probably the results are very good. But I have problems with irregular verbs and I always confuse verbs in time. This gives certain difficulties.

If the author of this thread wants to defeat ignorance it is proposed to organize courses of English language tuition on Skype for example. The error indicators will not make sense without training. Practice is the communication forum.

Glad I could help.

It's on the list – number 26.


Again, if they are using Google Translate, they won't make spelling mistakes, they would make non-logical sentences that make no sense. Besides, Google Translate is getting stronger and smarter nowadays, I give them that.

And american english is simply wrong. Since the only place you'll hear the queen's english is actually in aberdeen, may I suggest you all start talking scottish, where we simply change anything we want to suit our need's. This is how bad english actually is:

Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, be he alive, or be he dead, I'll break his bones to make my bread.

American english.. the only english that makes worse sense than the origional. <-(correct spelling!!)

Because some of the members here, their native language is not english, and I do believe some of the user out there use google translate in their post.

Another error which is quite common is the difference between it’s and its.

I wasn't a native english speaker, but I been speaking it for 20 years now and I still make many of these mistakes on the list. Good stuff.

List updated, thanks.
I know you and your are mistakes that I personally see from native speakers very often, but it's number 69 (now it's 70  ) due to the alphabetical order. That last part is hilarious, though   

I didn't know that, thanks for sharing it.

It's the same as Russian. I know your feeling though – it's exactly what I feel about German's Der/Das/Die, and Spanish's el/la un/una.

True. When having a chat with English native speakers, they don't care if you speak English fluently or not as long as you can understand each other.

With Ukrainian and Polish, too much in common, but English is really a problem. But I believe that the main thing is that we understand each other. When explaining a good conversation.

My native language is Polish (slavic) so all the "a/an" and "the" rules are just a nightmare for me because it is completely new idea, not present in any slavic language. In slavic languages we just write nouns without any articles.

There is Indian town named Alot, so if you put the uppercase it might be because of that.

You need to build your proposals correctly and then not only will the translator translate correctly, but the reader will also understand what was written.

I can't believe your and you're are number 69! It's #1 in my books. Everyone gets it wrong and I have no idea why.

Another one to add to the list, if I didn't just miss it, would be advice vs. advise.

You cannot advice me on what I should do, but you certainly can advise me . In other words, you could give me some advice!

I've also seen vary and very used incorrectly but definitely not as often.


Anyways thanx four the kool lessons you gived us hear. I seen them all over two and I cant stand them. Your a good guy and I hope you recieve alot of great feedback.

No problem, mate.
I have never used an online translator before, but I know what it is. If people are using it, and are still making such spelling mistakes, then it would be embarrassing. Online translators would make non–logical sentences (i.e., just English words tied together in a sentence that doesn't make any sense), not spelling mistakes. There is a browser add–on to help with Grammar (and English overall) called Grammarly, I'd recommend people to use it, if they are too lazy to learn.Exactly.

couple of days ago, google translate changed my a lot to alot 

If they are using online translators they wont make spelling mistakes which are subject of this topic.

The post is nice but will not help. A lot of people on the forum are not from English-speaking countries. Many use online translators. Want to help open online learning.

Thanks a lot for your time and effort learned a lot in this post.

Thanks. And true! I think the best way to gain a strong command over a language is to contact with it all the time (i.e., Seeing Movies, hearing Music, reading books, and, of course, chatting with native speakers).

You are welcome. Title is great now, just like the topic itself is 

I don`t think that English is the hardest language to learn. There are lot more languages that are a lot more harder... like Chinese
Also, you can never forget what you had learned once, since English all around us... there are musics, movies, also most of tech equipment have English menu...

Thanks for the suggestion.

Yes, and No. A word with an obvious consonant initial letter won't need pronunciation (Letters like 'b', 'c', 'd', 'f', 'g', 'j', 'l' (not 'i'), 'm', 'n', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'v', and 'z'). The words needed to be pronounced are the ones beginning with 'a', 'e', 'h', 'i', 'k', 'o', 'u', 'w', 'x', and 'y' (I know it's still much).

Neither am I, mate.

English is hard because of the many exceptions it has, there is no rule to follow all the time.

Man.. after looking through this, I can understand why people say english is one of the hardest language to learn. Good post

Very good post. But please consider most of us are not English native speakers.

it's very nice that you did this list, i hope that this will improve the grammar of the users, of course for those who will want to learn something

nice write up.. Thanks for the correction. You can adopt a child or a custom or a law; in all of these cases you are making the object of the adoption your own, accepting it. If you adapt something, however, you are changing it. Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle

but I would have to know the pronunciation of all words to apply the a/an rule

It is very nice from your part to help other members that are not so good in English and to get writings on this forum on higher level.
I only thing that you need to change the subject of this topic to something more specifically, so when someone browsing through the topics could assume what the topic is about and to read it if is interesting to him/her.

Thanks, mate. I hope this helps.

cool stuff man. keep it up!
im not so good in english also, but will use this as a learning reference. thanks for the post!

I have been seeing a lot of members writing inappropriate English during my experience in Bitcointalk community (and other forums). Unfortunately, some of those members are even Hero or Legendary members. Mostly, I tend to read more than posting, so I wanted to make this topic to help raising posting quality. You can’t say you are a top quality poster, if you make one of these mistakes. I will do my best in order to make this topic plain simple for everyone to understand.

I will be talking about spelling mistakes only in this topic, and I will try to update it as soon as I could. I won't touch grammar because grammar is... well... more complicated.

Note: Please, please, please, check the full thread. Maybe you are making a mistake and you don't know - we all do. I know it's long and boring, and you just want to post to raise your signature posting count, but this will help you in the long run.

List of most commonly used and misunderstood mistakes:
(The mistakes are in an alphabetical order.)

1. 'a' and 'an': There is a massive confusion between these two - when do I put 'a', and when do I put 'an'?!
We were always taught that 'a' precedes a word starting with a consonant letter, and 'an' precedes a word starting with a vowel letter (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). Now, can you put 'a' or 'an' professionally? Of course not.
The most important thing they don't tell us is that pronunciation is the secret ingredient to the recipe. If you want to correctly write 'a' or 'an' before a word, you have to pronounce/enunciate it. The sound of the first letter of a word will determine whether to put 'a' or 'an'. Let me explain by examples:

• A word like 'hour' begins with a consonant letter 'h', but when you pronounce it, 'h' is silent, you'll have the sound of a vowel letter 'o', hence: an hour;
• A word like 'university' begins with a vowel letter 'u', but when you pronounce it, you would have the sound of 'y', hence: a university;
• A word like 'one' begins with a vowel letter 'o', but when you pronounce it, you would have the sound of 'w', hence: a one-time offer;
• There are words which you can put 'a' or 'an' depending on your pronunciation ('a' U.S. vs. 'an' U.K.): Hotel, Historic, Horrific, Habitual, Herb, etc;
• Lastly, Acronyms: Which one to use 'a' or 'an'? An acronym like FPS – which is used in the gaming industry as a genre (First Person Shooter), or as a unit to measure a display device performance – is written as "a FPS," which is incorrect. When you pronounce 'FPS', the initial letter is 'F', its sound is 'ef' (vowel sound), hence: an FPS, an SPA, a UFO, a BB gun, an LSK coin, and so on.

 

2. 'allmost': Mistaken for 'almost', just like 'allways' is mistaken for 'always'. (Remember, it's only one 'l', not two.)

3. 'alot' and 'a lot': 'alot' is a very commonly used mistake, which, in fact, doesn't even belong to English. The correct word is 'a lot', and it's two words, just like 'a little', 'a bunch', 'a few', and 'a ton'.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: Alot of people are doing this. Correct: A lot of people are doing this.
• Incorrect: This is happening alot. Correct: This is happening a lot.

4. 'advice', and 'advise': People are mistaking one for the other. 'Advice' is a noun meaning a suggestion, a guidance, or an offered recommendation about what someone should do. 'Advise' is the present verb of 'advice', which means giving/offering a suggestion or a guidance to someone.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: You should give me an advise. Correct: You should give me an advice.
• Incorrect: The doctor adviced me to rest for a few days. Correct: The doctor advised me to rest for a few days.

 

5. 'ammount': Mistaken for 'amount'. (Remember, it's just one 'm'.)

6. 'another' and 'other': 'Another' is used before (singular) countable nouns, 'other' is used before (plural) uncountable nouns.
Example(s):

• Would you like another cup of coffee? Why do you want to make another shitcoin? In another 20 years, bitcoin will reach the sky!
• I have invited other people. I am currently busy with other things. Others don't understand this.

'Another' is one word, not two ('an other' is definitely NOT English).

7. 'atleast': Again, a common mistake just like 'alot'. The correct one is 'at least', and it consists of two words.

8. 'begining': Mistaken for 'beginning' (remember, two 'n').
Example: Incorrect: At the begining. Correct: At the beginning.
 
9. 'carefull', 'usefull' and the like: Are usually mistaken for -ful adjectives, The correct words are ending in 'ful' with a single 'l', not 'full'.
Example(s): Incorrect: Be carefull, Do something usefull. Correct: Be careful, Do something useful.

10. 'changable': Is mistaken for 'changeable'. Unlike 'achieveable', which is mistaken for 'achievable'.

11. 'comitted' or 'commited': Mistaken for 'committed'. (Misspelled due to its present verb 'commit', and its noun 'commitment'.)

12. 'concensus': A widespread mistake on the internet. The correct word is 'consensus', which means a general agreement.

13. 'disasterous': Mistaken for 'disastrous' because of its form (disaster–ous).

14. 'dissapear': Mistaken for 'disappear'. (Only one 's', and two 'p'.)

15. 'excede': Mistaken for 'exceed'. (Misspelled due to its pronunciation.)

16. 'exilerate': Mistaken for 'exhilarate'. (Misspelled due to its pronunciation.)

17. 'existance' and 'experiance': Most people are mistaking these words because of their pronunciation (especially if you hear them in American English). The correct ones are 'existence' and 'experience'.  

18. 'facinating': Mistaken for 'fascinating'. (Remember, 's' before 'c'.)

19. 'fullfil', 'fullfill', and the like: Again, a very mistaken word, people think it consists of (full-fill). The correct one is 'fulfill' (U.S. English) or 'fulfil' (U.K. English).

20. 'gaurantee' or 'gurantee': Mistaken for 'guarantee'. (Remember, 'u' before 'a'.)

21. 'heirarchy': Mistaken for 'hierarchy'. (It follows the 'i before e except after c' spelling rule, which doesn't apply all the time)

22. 'i': The most vastly used mistake. This is simply the lowercase letter 'i', and it means nothing else other than that. While most of Non-English people are using it as the pronoun referring to 'me' or 'myself', the correct one is 'I'.
Example: Incorrect: i think i should go. Correct: I think I should go.

23. 'immitate': Mistaken for 'imitate'.

24. 'independant': Mistaken for 'independent' (misspelled due to American English, but in U.K. English it's accepted as a noun).

25. 'inteligence' or 'intelligance': Mistaken for 'intelligence'.

26. 'intelecutal' or 'intelectual': Mistaken for 'intellectual'.

27. 'its' and 'it's': I am not talking about people who are too lazy to put an apostrophe, I am talking about people who unintentionally mistake one for the other. 'its' is the possessive of the pronoun 'it', while 'it's' is a contraction of 'it is' or 'it has'. If you aren't sure which one to use, simply put 'it is' or 'it has' instead of 'it's'.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: It's true that its annoying. Correct: It's true that it's (it is) annoying.
• Incorrect: Its known that Bitcoin is an open source, it's whitepaper is available for anyone to read. Correct: It's known that Bitcoin is an open source, its whitepaper is available for anyone to read.

28. 'kernal': Mistaken for 'kernel'.

29. 'lisense': Mistaken for 'license' (U.S. English, and U.K. verb) or 'licence' (U.K. English noun).
 
30. 'lose', 'lost', 'loss' and 'loose': People are confused which one is correct. 'Lose' is a verb, which means being unable to find or keep something, 'lost' is the past form of the verb, and 'loss' is the noun, while 'loose' can be a verb, an adjective, and a noun - it has nothing to do with 'lose'.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: When someone wins in gambling, others loose. Correct: When someone wins in gambling, others lose.
• Incorrect: They set the lion lose. Correct: They set the lion loose.

• Incorrect: One lose hurts us all. Correct: One loss hurts us all.

               
31. 'maintainance': A mistake that one sees every single day on forums, websites, games, etc. The correct word is 'maintenance', which means the process of maintaining or preserving a condition or a situation (which I think the reason for the misspelling).

32. 'millenium': Mistaken for 'millennium'.

33. 'miniscule': Mistaken for 'minuscule', which means extremely small.

34. 'mispell': Mistaken for 'misspell'. (Ironic, isn't it? Misspelling 'misspell'.)

35. 'neccessary': Mistaken for 'necessary'. (One 'c', two 's'.)

36. 'not to' and 'to not': A massive argument about which one comes first is issued every now and then. Personally, I prefer the first one, as it makes a comforting tone to my ears (and to any native speaker's). But last year, a few well-known newspapers (like NYT) have published articles that include 'to not', and American Dictionaries state that both are correct. But still, English teachers prefer 'not to', and they wish "not to" see 'to not' in any formal document.
 
37. 'noticable': Mistaken for 'noticeable'.

38. 'occassion': Mistaken for 'occasion'.

39. 'occurance', 'occurence' or 'occurrance': Mistaken for 'occurrence'. (-ance and -ence misspelling.)

40. 'orignal': Mistaken for 'original'.

41. 'outragous': Mistaken for 'outrageous'.

42. 'personel': Mistaken for 'personnel'.

43. 'posession' or 'possesion': Mistaken for 'possession'.

44. 'principal' and 'principle': 'Principal' is a noun and adjective referring to someone in a high rank or a position of authority. 'Principle' is only a noun that refers to a natural, moral, legal rule or standard.

45. 'privelge' or 'privelege': Mistaken for 'privilege'.

46. 'promiss': Mistaken for 'promise'.

47. 'publicly' and 'publically': Although some dictionaries recognize both as correct, 'publicly' is far more common than 'publically'. 'Publicly' is considered the only adverb ending in "-icly" formed from an adjective that ends in "-ic."

48. 'readible': Mistaken for 'readable'.

49. 'realy': Mistaken for 'really'.

50. 'refered' or 'reffered': Mistaken for 'referred'.

51. 'referance': Mistaken for 'reference'. (-ance and -ence misspelling.)

52. 'religous': Mistaken for 'religious'. (Formed from the noun religion.)

53. 'speach': Mistaken for 'speech'.

54. 'sucessful' or 'succesfull': Mistaken for 'successful'. (The noun is success.)

55. 'suprise': Mistaken for 'surprise'. (People mistake it because of the American pronunciation.)

56. 'than' and 'then': Another very misunderstood mistake. Most people (even English people known to myself) are confused with the usage of these two words. to be simply put, 'then' always refers to a sense of time (i.e., what is going to happen next), while 'than' is always used in comparisons between two things.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: I am better then before. Correct: I am better than before.
• Incorrect: Do your homework first than you can play. Correct: Do your homework first then you can play.
• Incorrect: It's more then enough. Correct: It's more than enough.

57. 'their', 'there' and 'they're': To be simple enough about this, 'their' is the possessive of the pronoun 'they', 'they're' is the contraction of 'they are', and 'there' mostly indicates to/in/at a place.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: There doing this now. Correct: They're (they are) doing this now.
• Incorrect: What were you doing their? Correct: What were you doing there?
• Incorrect: They're a lot of people using bitcoin nowadays. Correct: There are a lot of people using bitcoin nowadays.

58. 'themself': Mistaken for 'themselves', just like 'ourselves' and 'yourselves' (plural).

59. 'to' and 'too': Although the famous meme that we have here "it's too good to be true" makes it clear enough, people still mistake one for the other. 'To' is a preposition that means toward, reaching as far as, and until. 'Too' is an adverb that means additionally, very, extremely, or as well. If you have a doubt about which one to use, put any of "too synonyms" and see if it fits.
Example(s):

• Incorrect: The devs are to afraid to try. Correct: The devs are too afraid to try.
• Incorrect: I agree with you to. Correct: I agree with you, too.
• Incorrect: Higher fees are to annoying. Correct: Higher fees are too annoying.
• Incorrect: It's taking to long. Correct: It's taking too long.

60. 'tomorow', 'tommorow' or 'tommorrow': Mistaken for 'tomorrow'. (Just one 'm', two 'r'.)

61. 'treshold': Mistaken for 'threshold'. (The 'thre' in 'threshold' is pronounced like three, not tree.)

62. 'tyrany' or 'tyrent': Mistaken for 'tyranny' and 'tyrant'.

63. 'underate': Mistaken for 'underrate'. (Formed from 'under-rate'.)

64. 'untill': Another very common mistake that they even write it as 'till (abbreviated). The correct ones are 'until', 'till', or ''til'.

65. 'vise versa': Although it's a matter of debate, 'vice versa' is the correct one.

66. 'wellfare' or 'welfear': Mistaken for 'welfare'. (People think it's formed from 'well-fare'.)

67. 'wether': Very mistaken for 'whether'. (Again, pronunciation is the common culprit.)

68. 'wierd': Mistaken for 'weird'. (One of many exceptions to the 'i before e except after c' spelling rule.)
 
69. 'withold': Mistaken for 'withhold'. (Yes, don't look at it like that , it's two 'h'.)

70. 'writting': Mistaken for 'writing' (not like written).

71. 'your' and 'you're': A very common mistake made by English and Non-English people alike. 'Your' is the possessive of the pronoun 'you', and it's usually followed by a noun or gerund. 'You're' is the contraction of 'you are'. Simply if you aren't sure which one is correct, put 'you are' in its place, and see if the sentence still makes sense. (American pronunciation has a role in this confusion.)
Mistakes like hope your (you're) okay, or your (you're) welcome are used everyday, and they should be corrected.