As you’re perusing through social media posts, how often do you notice errors within grammar?
Please read below for the ones I’ve found, so far:
Error: “The problem of being faster than light is that you can only live in darkness.”
Defining the problem:
"Problem of" describes the problem as a whole; essentially, the entire thing is one big problem (an example: the problem of pollution is that more people are getting sick from it).
"Problem with" describes someone's relation to the problem, and how it affects them (some examples: the problem with my car is that it makes funny noises from the engine as I drive on the freeway, and I need to get it addressed... OR, there is a problem with my manager because she micro-manages everything that I do).
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “The problem with being faster than light is that you can only live in darkness.”
Error: “…and I’m very happy to have been apart of it.”
Defining the problem:
“Apart” and “A part” are two different meanings, although they sound the same.
“Apart” is an adverb, meaning that two or more people/things are separated by a distance; they are a specified distance from each other, in time or space (example: we now just live 10 minutes apart from each other).
“A part” is a noun, meaning a piece or segment of something such as an object, activity, or period of time, which is a fraction of a whole (example: she is playing a part in the school play).
I notice that so many times, in text, “apart” is used in place if “a part”, and it is so ironic, because they almost mean the exact opposite of each other, so it’s a contradiction.
In this sentence, the “apart” means that she was not connected/together with the show, however, in reality she was indeed “a part” of the tv show. The person who wrote this text for this E! News post, did so in error.
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “…and I’m very happy to have been a part of it.”
Error: “My son just texted me this, I am going to be sick.”
Defining the problem:
PROBLEM #1: Two independent clauses (within a sentence) can either be separated by a semi-colon, or a period.
In this post, these two clauses are independent, because they can indeed stand alone (you can say/write “My son just tested me this.” and “I am going to be sick.” as two independent sentences).
It is awkward for two independent clauses to only be separated by a comma, because it affects the clarity and flow of a sentence.
PROBLEM #2: Additionally, there needs to be a preposition, which is used for an expression of direction towards a point, person, place, or thing. In this case, we would use “to” towards the person who was the writer. So instead of “texted me this,” it should be “texted this to me.”
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “My son just texted this to me; I am going to be sick.”
Defining the problem: “Your” and “you’re” are two words that are frequently and incorrectly used interchangeably, since they sound identical when both are spoken out loud.
“Your” is a possessive adjective used to show ownership; it is not a contraction. “Your” is followed by a noun.
“You’re” is a contraction of the two words “you” and “are”.
In this specific sentence, we notice that the word after “your” (which is “chilling”) is not a noun, but rather a present continuous verb. So that tells us that we must use the contraction of the word in question (“you’re”, or “you are”).
We are also adding a comma after “chilling” to both distinguish between the two clauses, and create more clarity.
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “Imagine that you’re chilling, and a banana smacks you in the head.”
Error: “Imagine your chilling…”
Error: “…she never seen him do anything illegal.”
Defining the problem: The sentence in question relates to finished actions; these are actions or events that had happened sometime in a person’s past.
The exact date or time of the experience isn’t mentioned, and it essentially is still continuing to the present (she hadn’t “seen him” doing anything illegal in the past, and to this day, she still is continuing to not see him doing anything illegal), which marks it as present perfect simple tense.
“She never seen” is omitting the necessary “have,” which is an auxiliary verb for the present perfect simple tense.
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “…she had never seen him do anything illegal.” OR “…she never saw him do anything illegal.”
Error: “I can safely say it completely changed Chris and I’s marriage for the better.”
Defining the problem:
The marriage is the subject, and
“I” is a subject; it is a personal pronoun which is the one “doing” the verb mentioned in a sentence.
Since “It” is the subject, there cannot be another subject, so instead of using “I”, we can change it to “my”.
“My” is possessive, and she owns the marriage with her husband
For an example, “He hit my car” “He hit I’s car”
To fix it: So the predicate can be changed to either “it completely changed the marriage between Chris and me, for the better” or “it completely changed my marriage with Chris, for the better.”
OR “I can safely say, ‘It completely changed our marriage for the better.’”
Error: “…Him and his father [name] are the doctors behind the viral “mewing” technique.”
Defining the problem: Every sentence needs a subject. In this sentence, two doctors (a son and the father) are both the subject.
However, the word being used is “him”, which is an object pronoun that is used as the object of a verb or preposition in a sentence. It is used to refer to a male person who is the recipient of an action or the object of a preposition.
A third person pronoun of the subject (his son) is “he”.
Choose the correct option between the two: 1.) “He is the doctor doing this surgery…” or 2.) “Him is the doctor doing this surgery…” Yep, you got it – the answer is number 1.). So, in the original sentence, since the son is also a subject, the word in question should be “He” (instead of “Him”) 😊
Therefore, the subject in this sentence should be “He and his father”.
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “…he and his father...”
Error: “If the subjects you cover in school aren’t exciting to you, find ways to get involved in things that are.”
Defining the problem: A sentence cannot be composed of two dependent clauses. However, the two clauses of this “sentence” are both dependent; “If the subjects you cover in school aren’t exciting to you” and “find ways to get involved in things that are” each cannot stand alone.
“That” is used as a conjunction to link a verb, adjective or noun with the following clause. In this “sentence”, there is no text following the words “that are”, so it is not specifically clear as to what is the context of “that are” (that are… what, exactly?).
We are left to assume that the “that are” is related to the noun of the previous clause, which was “unexciting school subjects”.
However, to be grammatically correct and very clear to all of the readers, we must end the second clause with the noun (exciting to you).
To fix it: Therefore, the best edit to the originally mentioned sentence should be “…find ways to get involved in things that are exciting to you.”