Purple Hearts

Being able to tell a great story is only part of succeeding as an author. It’s those pesky words and mechanics that get in the way. Here’s a quick run down of some of the most common word errors.

Don’t be that guy.

In to/Into AND Onto/On to - Into/Onto are prepositions, so they need an object.  For example: Into the house, Onto the table, Into the car. . .

Tina Blue has a great example of how to keep them straight. Just remember these two examples:

1. She turned her paper in to the teacher.
2. She turned her paper into the teacher. POOF - Her paper is now a teacher!

Its/It’s AND Who’s/Whose -  I struggled with this one when I was young. Which word gets the apostrophe? In both cases it’s the contraction - remember, the apostrophe replaces the missing letters. IT’S it’s.

Affect/Effect - Affect: To influence. Effect: A result. Check out Grammar Girl for great guidelines.

Farther/Further - Farther is a distance. Further is a greater degree.
She drove farther to get here than I did. This matter will take further investigation.

Who/That - Remember, a person is a “who” - Jessica, who is on the blog with me, writes great posts.

Often a mistake commonly made is writing how we speak. For example: could of, should of, would of. These should actually be could/would/should have.  “I should have checked my spelling before handing in my paper.”

A typical new writer mistake are homonyms, words that sound alike but are spelled different and have different meanings. When I’m writing on auto-pilot, my biggest homonym error is Thrown/Throne. My hero is not going to claim his ‘thrown’ - no matter how many times I type it.  Check out Alan Cooper’s “All About Homonyms” page - he has an amazing list!

So there are the basic mistakes I struggled with when I began writing. Let’s hear yores - I mean yours.

-bria