{"id":326,"date":"2011-07-15T19:50:31","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T19:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/supaproofread.com\/blog\/?p=326"},"modified":"2023-10-17T14:28:56","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T14:28:56","slug":"common-mistakes-in-written-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/common-mistakes-in-written-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Mistakes in Written English"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What mistakes do you notice?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People are the same everywhere. Whether you receive work from the west or the east, from America or China, from Dublin, Dundee or Humberside, the same mistakes are made<\/a>. Of course, if no mistakes were made then there wouldn\u2019t be the need for proofreaders. Here are some of the common errors made by authors. Let\u2019s start at the beginning.<\/p>\n

Contents page<\/strong> \u2013 think of the reader who has to wade through it. Is there really a need for chapter headings (1), subheadings (1.1) and sub-subheadings (1.1.1) all with lengthy descriptions? If your contents page is itself longer than a page it\u2019s too long. Call me a minimalist, but a chapter-heading page is plenty. Also, I\u2019m one of the proofreaders who will need to redo every page number when the piece is finished.<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong> \u2013 or the enigmatically titled \u2018abstract\u2019 opening paragraph. More often than not the notion of abstract is horribly apt since it\u2019s rare to be able to figure out what\u2019s coming next. And isn\u2019t that the point of the Introduction? To set out what\u2019s coming up? Perhaps lecturers and question-setters should abandon the word abstract, since it seems to encourage people to be more, well, abstract when they should be descriptive.
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\nAmerican<\/strong> \u2013 far be it from me to offend our American friends<\/a> but unless you\u2019re at an American university, don\u2019t forget to include U\u2019s in words, get rid of those double spaces, and stop saying organization. Unless it\u2019s the World Health Organization. Then it\u2019s ok because their website says Z. I mean, I know a Z rather than an S can be technically used in the UK, but it just looks wrong. If I can\u2019t imagine seeing it in a UK newspaper, I tend to get rid, unless I\u2019m told to keep it in. I love America, I just got back from my 15th<\/sup> visit there, but let\u2019s hold out against the corruption of our language. I don\u2019t want to correct any more colors or favors (as shown in my previous article: what is proofreading<\/a>). Actually, I\u2019d rather spend time thanking you for taking Simon Cowell off our hands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tenses<\/strong> \u2013 please, make your mind up. You undertook the research, you read the journals, you carried out the experiments, and you sent out the questionnaires. It\u2019s all happened. Past tense. I once proofread a book that was supposed to be a diary format Bridget Jones type thing: it was in the present tense. It\u2019s a diary!<\/p>\n

Bad signs<\/strong> \u2013 when the filename is misspelt. I\u2019m fairly sure a mess lies within when the filename is \u2018foor proufreding\u2019, \u2018reflaction draft\u2019 or \u2018disserstation proofreading\u2019.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong> \u2013 this is really another case of make your mind up. APA, Harvard, none? Half your journal titles are in italics, the other half aren\u2019t. A third of your author names are written out (John Smith), a third are initial\/backwards (Smith, J.) and the final third are forwards (J. Smith). The book title has Capital Letters On Each Word, the date of the publication is in (brackets), then the book title is in lower case and the date is at the end, even after the publishing house. Also, it doesn\u2019t impress anyone to have a bibliography of 50 books. Actually, I take it back: I enjoy fixing it all; it\u2019s one of my favourite things to do, so keep making a mess.<\/p>\n

Photos\/diagrams\/graphs\/figures<\/strong> \u2013 I once proofed a document about the thrilling world of outdoor air conditioning. As in, flue systems in Middle Eastern countries, which was, one might say, written in a dry style. Most pages had diagrams of said flue systems and airways constructed in outdoor courtyards. Hey, someone has to learn about this stuff. These diagrams were small, numerous and each had a number and description. But with 5 on each page, every other page, the figure names were all over the place. And of course it was impossible to tell which description matched which diagram, since I\u2019m not up on my outdoor airflow structure dynamics. People, don\u2019t overload the pages with diagrams. You\u2019re on a word count limit, not a page count. Bigger diagrams are fine, spread them out a little, there\u2019s nothing wrong with giving my\/the lecturers\u2019 eyes a break.<\/p>\n

Formulae<\/strong> \u2013 I am a Mac snob. So I\u2019m going to proffer that this problem is mine (and my Mac brethren) alone. If you have \u2018macros\u2019, whatever they are, in your document, spare me a thought. I can\u2019t see them; all I get are little question marks inside boxes. If the document opens at all it constantly crashes, I can\u2019t proof what I can\u2019t see. Actually, this little request is more directed at developers \u2013 please make Word work for Macs better. Which brings me to\u2026<\/p>\n

Word<\/strong> \u2013 I\u2019m not a Gates hater, at all, but his products are just terrible. Ok, maybe Excel has some good points, but PowerPoint sucks. And yet here I am, making my living as a person completely tied into Word. My Mac, in the four years I\u2019ve had it, has crashed three times. My copy of Word crashes at least twice a day. Mind you, at least I don\u2019t have to use it to write, I just use it to proof. Oh wait, I\u2019m in it right now. Damn. Ok, better wrap this up; a crash can\u2019t be far away.<\/p>\n

Now, these aren\u2019t going to be all of the different writing mistakes that you\u2019ll make when creating your first novel, writing that award-winning dissertation, or a CV that shines. But, you can see the different elements that crop up in papers every time I read through them. It\u2019s okay if you don\u2019t want to follow the list though, as I\u2019ll be happy to look over your work when you send it in to be checked and reviewed by Supaproofread<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People are the same everywhere. Whether you receive work from the west or the east, from America or China, from Dublin, Dundee or Humberside, the same mistakes are made. Of course, if no mistakes were made then there wouldn\u2019t be the need for proofreaders. Here are some of the common errors made by authors. Let\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":630,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-common-mistakes","8":"category-student-writing-advice","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.supaproofread.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}