Most common punctuation and grammar
Mistakes in student assignments
1. Passive voice. Avoid passive voice verbs whenever possible. (ex: was seen, will be found, is completed, etc.) Passive voice disguises the main "actor" in the sentence, which should be the subject of the sentence. P.V. sentences are also clumsier and wordier.
2. Hyphenation. Compound adjectives and other modifiers (ex: four-year-old boy,
well-constructed building) should be joined by a hyphen. Hyphens differ from dashes. Use two hyphens to form a dash. (Exception: "ly" adverbs such as "newly discovered…" don’t require hyphenation)3. Comma’s with compound verbs. Do not put a comma between two verbs in a sentence that has only one subject. Do use comma’s with compound sentences, which contain two subjects and two verbs. See no. 7.
4. Compound sentences. Compound sentences (with two subjects and two verbs separated by a conjunction) do require a comma before their conjunction (and, but, etc.).
5. Overly long sentences. This means your sentence is too long, confusing or convoluted. Re-cast and re-write it into two sentences. Avoid sentences with more than 20-25 words unless you have a good reason to do so.
6. Run-on sentences (comma splice). Avoid separating two complete sentences with only a comma; separate them with a period or a semi-colon.
7. Unnecessary comma. Your sentence doesn’t require a comma in this particular place. Generally students are more likely to insert an unnecessary comma than they are to omit one where it’s needed.
8. Pronoun disagreement. Use "it" or "its" to refer to a singular collective noun instead of "they" or "their." For example refer to a magazine or company name by "it" and "its" instead of "they" or "their." When you use "they" or "their," the pronoun must refer to at least two people and not "he" or "she."
9. Dead construction. Avoid beginning a sentence with vague and dull dead constructions: "it is," "it was," "there is," "there was," "there will be," etc. Re-write the sentence to use a concrete noun as subject followed by an action verb.
10. Unnecessary adjective or adverb. The vague adjective or adverb you have used here doesn’t contribute concrete meaning or substance to the sentence. Adverbs such as "really" or "very" are often unnecessary.
11. Incomplete sentence. The sentence can’t stand by itself. That means you have most likely written a dependent clause beginning with "because" or "although."
12. Quotation mark punctuation. Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks. Question marks may go inside or outside, depending on the context.