You probably are investing some of your time in learning and improving your English and while doing this, you might get some important grammar rules a little mixed up. In order to help you in your writing, we have made this list of some grammar mistakes that can be commonly made, we hope it helps.
1. The Subjunctive
This one is pretty simple. When you’re writing about a non-true situation – usually following the word if or the verb wish – the verb to be should be conjugated as were.
So:
*If I was were a rich man.
*I wish I was were a fantastic singer.
If you are using if for other purposes (hypothetical situations, questions), you don’t use the subjunctive.
*The reporter asked him if he were was happy.
*If an intruder were was here last night, he would have left footprints, so let’s look at the ground outside.
2. Bad parallelism
This issue comes up most often in lists, for example: My friend made salsa, guacamole, and brought chips. If you start out by having made cover the first two items, it has to cover the next ones as well. To fix it, you usually have to do just a little reorganizing. Thus, My friend made salsa and guacamole and brought chips to go with them.
3. Verb problems
There are a few persistent troublemakers you should be aware of.
*I’m tired, so I need to go lay lie down.
*The fish laid lay on the counter, ready to broil.
*Honey, I shrunk shrank the kids.
*He seen saw it coming.
(The last two examples of verbs where people sometimes switch the past and the participle forms. Thus, it would be correct to write: I have shrunk the kids and He has seen it coming.)
4. Pronoun problems
Let’s take a look at three little words. Me, myself and I. Grammatically, they can be called object, reflexive, and subject. As long as they’re by themselves, object and subject don’t give anyone problems. That is, no one who’s an adult native English speaker would say Me walked to the bus stop or He gave the book to I. For some reason, though, things can get tricky when a pronoun is paired with a noun. We all know people who say things like Me and Fred had lunch together yesterday, instead of Fred and I… Heck, most of us have said it ourselves; for some reason, it comes easily off the tongue. We also (most of us) know not to use it in a piece of writing.
There’s a similar attraction to using the subject instead of object. Even Bill Clinton did this back in 1992 when he asked voters to give Al Gore and I [instead of me] a chance to bring America back. Or you might say, Thanks for inviting my wife and I, or between you and I… Some linguists have defended this usage, however, it’s still generally considered wrong and should be avoided.
A word that’s recently become quite popular is myself — maybe because it seems like a compromise between I and me. But sentences like Myself and my friends went to the mall or They gave special awards to Bill and myself don’t work. Change the first to My friends and I… and the second to Bill and me.
5. The semicolon
I sometimes say that when you feel like using a semicolon,lay lie down till the urge goes away. But if you just can’t resist, remember that there are really only two proper uses for this piece of punctuation. One is to separate two complete clauses (a construction with a subject and verb that could stand on its own as a sentence). I knocked on the door; no one answered. The second is to separate list items that themselves contain punctuation. Thus, The band played Boise, Idaho; Schenectady, New York; and Columbus, Ohio.
Do not use a semicolon in place of a colon, for example, There is only one piece of punctuation that gives people nightmares; the semicolon.
I hesitate to state what should be obvious, but sometimes the obvious must be stated. So here goes: Do not use it’s, you’re or who’s when you mean its, your or whose. Or vice versa!