Grammar Mistakes
Do you often make the same grammatical mistakes when writing ? Find the correct spelling and write it down here for reference (in English or in your own language (or both))
Homonyms can be tricky to figure out! The following examples of common homonym mistakes prove that spell-check can only go so far in helping to error proof your document.
Affect vs. Effect
Affect can be only a verb, usually meaning to influence; (an easy way to remember this is that 'affect' starts with an "a", as does 'action'!)
Effect can be both a noun and a verb, although is most common as a noun meaning result. 'Effect' used as a verb means to bring about, normally to bring about some kind of change.
Example: The game will affect the standings. The effect was overwhelming. I managed to effect a change in his behavior.
Aid vs. Aide
Aid is assistance.
Aide is a person who serves or offers assistance.
Example: "The aide will aid the victim."
It's vs. Its
It's is a contraction, short for either It is or It has.
Its is the possessive form of it. This usually means that the following noun phrase belongs to 'it'. It is important to recognise that 'its' the possessive form does not have an apostrophe - it is in the same category as 'his'.
(this note is part of the default data file - more examples in the data file)
We all make mistakes, and some mistakes we make again and again.
Create a note where you list your most common grammatical mistakes to help you avoid the same problems in the future.
It can also be useful to create a simple 'dictionary' if English is not your native language (or any other language for that matter) where you list the most difficult translations that you struggle with.
Incremental search will let you find what you need quickly, but if you want to use full-text search instead, you could try the following trick:
?It's vs. ?Its
By adding a question mark in front of the word, it is now easy to search for "it's" (you would probably get lots of matches for "it's" usually, but "?it's" is unique).
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