Grammar-Related Usage Errors

TOPICS ON THIS PAGE

PARTS OF SPEECH ERRORS

Adverbs and Adjectives •

Verbals and Non-Verbals •

Compound Modifiers and Phrases •

Modifiers and Their Derivation Words •

Nouns and Their Derivation Words •

Phrasal Verbs and Nouns and Nouns Phrases •

Imaginary Syllables (Prefixes, Suffixes, etc.) •

Miscellaneous •

PRONOUN CASE ERRORS

SUBJECT-OBJECT VERB ERRORS

(Active/Passive Mix-Ups)

PARTS OF SPEECH ERRORS

Every word has a part of speech, a role it serves in the expression of a sentence. Some words can be used in two or more parts of speech.

Colloquial English is, by its nature, imprecise, and it frequently lets slide many of the errors made with parts of speech, especially if they seem to have nit-picking similarities. Adverbs and adjectives, for instance, are both modifiers, but some adjectives end in "-ly" (e.g., comely; manly; unseemly; friendly; ungainly), an ending we traditionally associate with adverbs; conversely, some adverbs end in "-y" or no ending at all (e.g.,very; more; even; not), making them easy to confuse with adjectives. Such issues for the most part lie in the domain of ESL writing and the special errors that occur with it--but not all! For instance, which is grammatically correct? "After it was fixed, the blender worked good" or "... the blender worked well"? What about, "He ran fast" or "He ran quickly"? In the sentence, "The student drop out rate was low at her school," should "drop out" be two separate words, or should it be hyphenated? Or, should it be one word? What's the difference among these?

A clear understanding of what Parts of Speech do will help to dispel some of the confusion, but, in the meantime, here's a breakdown of some of the most common usage errors resulting from mixed-up parts of speech:

CONFUSING ADVERBIAL AND ADJECTIVAL FORMS

CONFUSING VERBAL* AND NON-VERBAL FORMS

*Here "verbal" means a category of words derived from verbs; "verbals" include present-and past-participles, gerunds, and infinitives.

The adjective "cliched" and the noun "cliche" both derive from the past participle form of the French verb clicher.

CONFUSING ONE-WORD "COMPOUND" MODIFIERS WITH TWO-WORD PHRASES

CONFUSING MODIFIERS AND THE VERBS FROM WHICH THEY WERE ADAPTED

CONFUSING NOUNS AND THE VERBS FROM WHICH THEY WERE ADAPTED

CONFUSING PHRASAL VERB FORMS WITH NOUNS AND NOUN PHRASES

IMAGINARY AND REDUNDANT SUFFIXES, PREFIXES AND VERB ENDINGS

°Publically is an acceptable variant of publicly, but is not preferred. 

MISCELLANEOUS JUNK, CONFUSING A BIT OF THIS AND THAT 

*applies to other verbs using the modal "have": would have; should have; might have; ought to have; wanted to have; etc.

PRONOUN CASE ERRORS

Just as Malapropists overcompensate for the vocabulary they never quite mastered (or the Latin they never took in high school), those guilty of pronoun case errors overcompensate for the grammar they never quite learned. The result is usually a clumsy pairing of prepositions with relative pronouns, left-handed modifiers, or a fake pronoun plugged into a sentence like a bottle cap into a fuse box. And to top it off, some of the correct usage still sounds more awkward than the incorrect usage. Following are some examples, but you'll find a full explanation of Pronoun Case Errors in the companion resource, The Mind of a Sentence: A Guide To Parts of Speech.

ACTIVE-PASSIVE VERB ERRORS

Another category of usage error involves special verb patterns in which one verb is used to convey the active component and the other is used to convey the passive component (e.g., with "teach and learn": "My professor learned me something new today."). Though most writers overcome the active-passive usage errors by the time they reach college, occasionally such errors do persist, particularly the state/quote error: "In his play, Hamlet, the main character quotes, 'To be or not to be . . . .'"

In fact, almost never does one hear anymore the words "nauseous" and "nauseated" used correctly. The confusion lies, not just over the active-passive relationship, but specifically how that relationship is played out in the present- and past-participle forms of the verb "nauseate." Everyone knows how "nauseating" and "nauseated" are different, but which of these is a synonym for the adjective "nauseous"? The correct answer is "nauseating"; that means, in describing how one is feeling, in almost all cases the correct form of the verb is the past participle "nauseated": "Because I feel a little nauseated today, I think I may be coming down with the flu." To be "nauseous" means that one is nauseating--i.e., sickening to others: "John's cloying optimism is nauseous." When you test whether or not "nauseating" can be substituted, only then does the correct choice becomes clear. Here's a short list of such errors: