I know I'm going overboard... but what the He**!
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From Wikipedia... "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Common_grammatical_errors"
Common grammatical errors
Listed here are common grammatical errors in English that are usually picked up over the Internet. Note: You may find though that evolution of a language may somehow negate this.
Common sentence structure mistakes
Punctuation should go either inside or outside quotation marks depending on whether or not the punctuation is part of the quotation. See Wikipedia:
Quotation marks.
Use square brackets within parentheses when you must use parentheses again. (i.e. She spoke ironically [meaning jokingly].)
Punctuation goes outside parentheses that are a part of the sentence (as in the above example or this example). They go inside the parentheses if it's actually a sentence. (e.g. She spoke ironically. [This meant she was joking.])
Use a
semicolon in the place of a period when joining two sentences that share a central idea. For example: "Many people think that semicolons are used the same way as commas. They are not." → "Many people think that semicolons are used the same way as commas; however, they are not."
Use an
em dash (—) instead of "-" or "--".
Apostrophes should be used only for contractions ("It's OK to use one here") or possessive form ("Bob's use of apostrophes is correct"). It is common and incorrect to use an apostrophe to indicate a plural ("Error's like this are annoying") except for plurals of single letters (mind your P's and Q's).
Common misspellings
Error → Correction.
(Ordered by commonness.)
"alot" → "a lot".
"it's" 1 → "its".
"who's" 1 → "whose".
"lets" (3rd person present simple active form of the verb "to let" as in: "Bill lets his son use his credit card") → "let's" (contraction for "let us" as in: "Let's go to the store.").
"todo" → "to do".
"upto" → "up to".
"ofcourse" → "of course".
"allright" or "alright"2 → "all right".
"allways" or "all ways"3 → "always".
"their" → "they're".
"theirselves" → "themselves".
"affect" versus "effect".
"buisness" → "business".
"pronounciation" → "pronunciation".
"arguement" → "argument".
"definately", "definetely", … → "definitely".
"ressource" → "resource"
See Wikipedia:
List_of_common_misspellings for countless others.
1 "It" and "who" are
pronouns, not
nouns. Therefore when they are used as possessives, they are not written like contractions "it's" ("it is") and "who's" ("who is").
2 "Alright" is a nonstandard spelling that has become heavily used due to its analogy with similar contractions such as "always" and "almighty". Wikipedia prefers standard writing.
3 "All ways" is only written "always" if you are not referring to "all possibilities". (i.e. "She is better than him in all ways," versus, "She is always better than him.")
From:
http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/bio65/Common_Grammatical_Errors.htm
10 Common Grammatical Errors
1. Noun-verb mismatch, e.g. "A herd of horses are better than a flock of sheep" (?herd? is singular). ?The City feels that this is a bad idea?. (A city can?t feel)
2. Adjective used as adverb, e.g. and especially "I did good in this course"
3. Split infinitive, e.g. "I urge you to not support this Bill".
4. Misplaced modifier, e.g. "We need to stop dumping waste into the environment which kills the fish".?? TO avoid this mistake, put the modifier as close as possible to the noun it is modifying.? Repaired: "We need to stop dumping waste, which kills the fish, into the environment". ?
5. Dangling (or misplaced) participle A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical SUBJECT of the sentence.? Wrong: "As the largest reptiles ever to have lived, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs".?? This suggests that small mammals were the largest reptiles ever to have lived.? Repaired: "Being small and defenseless, small mammals could not compete with the dinosaurs". More examples).
6. Ending a sentence with a preposition, e.g. "This is something we need to work on".
7. Starting a paragraph with a conjunction that should refer to the previous sentence, e.g. "Furthermore,...", "However,..."
8. Run-on sentences (two complete sentences joined by a comma rather than a period or semicolon) ?The lab is a dangerous place, you should wear a lab coat?. (could be repaired by the addition of ?so?.
9. Incomplete sentences, including those with no verb, e.g. "These animals could be harmed by various things.? Pollution, for example."
10. Mixing up the "notorious confusables" (confusibles?)(e.g. their vs. there)