One example that first comes to mind when I think of poor grammar is using incorrect word when writing. For example if I were to say, “It’s theirs.” In this case I am saying that something belongs to someone else. If I were to place they’re in the sentence, “It’s they’re,” that would be incorrect because they’re is a contraction of they are not theirs as in it belongs to someone. I think this happens often because in our language we do have a lot of words that have different meanings but are spelt very similar.

Ok Here is some good examples of them there grammar that’s bad!

You is going down to the lake tonight latter right?

You and Me should be going down there to help get stuff ready for tomorrow.

That things wait is massive it’s gotta be at least two hundred lb.

You best be getting some shut eye, tomorrow is a big day for me and you, witch of the bunk beds is you going to be gonna sleeping in top or bottom?


As you can see, very poor word usage occurred in all of these examples. They are not structured correctly and cause confusion to the reader, words are misused and strung together in a sloppy manner, and few if any punctuation marks appear, causing the text to be read horrendously.

is this site working properly?

I lost everything that I typed earlier dang it!

1. Here be some sample examples of them there grammar mess ups.

2. You and me is going down to the lake to set up stuff for later. You should get some shut
eye which bunk is you gonna be sleeping at the top or bottom?
3. The wait of that steel bar must be at least more heavy than the smaller one.

These examples are easy to laugh at but I have actually seen and heard people write and talk like this. The word use and punctuation is horrendous, it is difficult for the reader to understand and sounds awful. in example #3 the misuse of the word “wait” should be weight is a common mistake of poor grammar.

dang it

I think that one of the most missed mistakes in writing is the missuse of me Vs. I. It can be often hard to determine which one to use in a sentance. A bad example would be; “Sampson decided to give the furs to Joan and I.” This is bad because it uses the wrong form of first person reference. In order to find the correct word to use in this instance, you would simple take out the second party and restate the sentence. “Sampson decided to give the furs to I.” This is not good grammar, thus it can be switched to me. Restating it would go, “Samson decided to give the furs to Joan and Me.” This might not sound like proper English, but it is since we can check it with the removal test; “Sampson decided to give the furs to me.” Much better.

One problem i think we run across are sentence fragments. To be a sentence it needs to have a subject. A subject is the main idea or topic of a sentence. The second thing a sentence needs is a predicate which is a statement made about the subject. It also needs to make a dependent clause. It shouldn’t have to rely on another sentence to fill in the blanks. An example of a sentence fragment would be, Unless there is old wiring in the house. It looks long and seems to be a sentence but it leaves you wondering, what about the old wiring in the house. It needs another sentence to help support it which makes it a fragment. Here is an example of a sentence. Nevertheless, they plotted. It looks like a fragment just because its so short but it has everything needed to qualify as a sentence. You can never tell if it’s a true sentence just by how long it is.

One thing that bugs me about grammar usage is when “we was…” is used instead of “we were…” It seems to be very popular here in Utah.

One problem I have grammatically is that I write a lot like how I talk. I constantly use sentence fragments, assume readers know what I’m saying based on a preceding sentence, and I tend to forget that slang may be confusing to an audience.
As I read the DK handbook, I realized that there are tons of things I need to work on. Here’s an example of a sentence I used in an aviation paper just last week:

“Captain wouldn’t do that!”

The above sentence is definitely a sentence fragment. It is missing important information about who the captain is specifically, what he/she wouldn’t do, and why. The sentence is stated with the assumption that the audience already knows who and what i’m talking about and why.

I also tend to be a bit too descriptive sometimes in my writing. A lot of adjectives I use aren’t relevant to what I’m writing about. For example, if I were writing a paper on a speech that a student gave about uniforms, I wouldn’t need to describe his/her sexual orientation, if whether or hot he/she was disabled, or if he/she was going to the dance later that night.

If you’ve spent any time on sites where writers congregate that also allow animated avatars, odds are you’ve seen this or a variation on it. It makes me giggle every single time.

It’s a simple listing of some of the most common mistakes made in the online writing communities that mark a person as a new writer with a witty response to help illustrate where it all went wrong. Most involve homonyms, the bane of anyone who talks a lot but writes very little. Best way to avoid problems with homonyms? Read everything you can that’s not Myspace or Facebook. The more you see these different words used properly, the more likely you’ll be able to recognize which spelling is the one you’re looking for.

1. “Your stupid.”

“My stupid what?”

2. Your ‘throws of ecstasy’ send me into throes of amusement.

3. You can defuse a bomb. But ‘diffusing’ it might be a bad idea.

4. If you really did have ‘baited breath’, you would smell rather fishy.

5. ‘Thru’ is only a word if you’re referring to getting a hamburger in your car.

6. ‘Rouge’ is a color. A ‘rogue’ isn’t.

7. ‘Per se’ means ‘of itself’. ‘Per say’ is only how you pronounce it.

8. A ‘horde’ is a large group, often unruly. To ‘hoard’ means to gather and often references dragons.

9. Fire is fiery. Use your spellchecker and burn all misspellings.

10. If you had a ‘D’ you wouldn’t deserve congratulations.

11. ‘A lot’ is two words. ‘Allot’ means ‘to distribute’.

This last one is simply an expansion of a good rule that we all learned that helps to clarify things a little bit more:

‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ or when sounding like ‘a’ as in neighbor or weigh. Unless it’s weird.

I am from good ol’ Cedar City, UT where it is ok to spout out anything, and be grammatically wrong, and have it still be ok. For example, it is incredibly popular to misuse the word “seen.” A lot of people use it instead of the word “saw.” For example, one from Cedar City might saw, “I seen the buck run over that hill.” This is incorrect because the wrong conjugation of the verb has been used. One would need to say “I saw the buck run over that hill.” Or if that person really wanted to say seen they could say “I have seen that buck run over the hill.” The problem with using the incorrect conjugation goes back to what the audience processes. If used wrong, the audience will not be able to tell if one is talking about past, present, or future. And besides that, it sounds silly to say seen instead of saw. Unless the goal of the writer/speaker is to sound like a hick from southern Utah, it may be best to conjugate correctly.

Mark’s second comment hit the nail on the head for me. The usage of me vs. I. When I talk to people or write to others it is the one thing I really stumble over. Sometimes it makes sence and it is wrong and other time it sounds bad to the ear and it is correct. There are other grammatical errors I hear but, that is the one that takes the cake.

Oddly enough one of the mistakes I hear often is the use of the word “don’t” instead of “doesn’t”. A simple example is “It don’t matter”. I think if people would take apart conjugates they would see how silly it really sounds, “It do not matter”, sounds like it came from a cave man. However if you split doesn’t, then you would get “It does not matter”, much more pleasing to the ear.

P.S. I have proof read this a couple of times now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still grammar errors in it, how ironic.

I will agree with the “We was.” I hear that one a lot along with “I seen me…” or “I drive truck” I like it better when they say, “I drive a truck.” One more that I don’t like is, “I am going fur sum food.” I believe they mean, “I am going to get some food.”

One of my biggest problems with punctuation is the use of semicolon and hyphen. I’m not always sure when it’s appropriate to use them. Other than the semi-colon and hyphen, WORD.exe catches most of my mistakes.

Probably my biggest grammar mistakes are having to do with commas. I still can have a difficult time with it, but at times I end up putting more commas than should be there.

An example of a comma splice is here:

“I drove towards the streetlight, without pausing, I veered right.”

To fix this, the two independent clauses “I drove towards…” and “without pausing…” can have a coordinating conjuction (and, but, and so on) placed between to combine the two into one sentence. Also, simply making them separate sentences works as well.

One type of grammar mistake that I’ve noticed recently is the use of You’re and your.
You’re is a conjuction and it shows that you are doing something.
an example: You’re going down to the store.
Your is possesive and it shows that something belongs to yoou.
a example: Your family is visiting.

One of the most common errors in writing is the use of run-on sentences. I have sometimes struggled on determining how much information should be included in a sentence and where to break sentences up. The main problem this causes is that it makes your writing not very coherent.

An example that first comes to mind is…….It is harder for a hunter to find older mule deer than their younger counterparts. If one happens to find a herd…….One in this case is refering to a hunter and not the older or younger mule deer. I would need to make sure that one refers to the right noun.

A grammar mistake that I’ve seen a lot is the use of their, there, and they’re. For example… I left my shirt over their. The correct word would be there which is to describe where something is. Their shows possession. They’re is a contraction of they and are.

“She always parks in the person who’s not here’s space.”

This can be unpacked in two ways:
If “the person who’s not here” refers to a particular person (e.g, Tom, who’s not here today) then this means “She always parks in the space of the person who’s not here (i.e., Tom’s space).”
But if it means anyone who happens not to be here then it means: “She always parks in the space of whoever’s not here.” In this case it is better to say “She always parks in whoever’s not here’s space.”

I grew up in Spanish Fork and, at times, find myself slipping into Spanish Fork slang. Used to could…I cringe when that phrase slips out. Using fer instead of for…ugh. I always catch the words AFTER they slip out. I find it embarrassing but it does always lend an opportunity for a good laugh.

my most common mistake is changing the order of the sentences, or better, keeping the Spanish way to say or to write something, for example the “car red”, or saying “the car is red”, instead of just saying “the red car”, another example could be the car of my wife, in the passive, instead of ” my wife’s car”: the active way.

hopefully I will improve, these and many other mistakes I usually do.

One problem I have grammatically is that I write a lot like how I talk. I constantly use sentence fragments, assume readers know what I’m saying based on a preceding sentence, and I also tend to forget that slang may be confusing to an audience.
As I read the DK handbook, I realized that there are tons of things I need to work on. Here’s an example of a sentence I used in an aviation paper just last week:

“Central engine in wingspan one.”

The above sentence is definitely a sentence fragment. It is missing a verb, what the central engine does, and why. The sentence is stated with the assumption that the audience already knows what I’m talking about and why.

I also tend to be a bit too descriptive sometimes in my writing. A lot of adjectives I use aren’t relevant to what I’m writing about. For example, if I were writing a paper on a speech that a student gave about uniforms, I wouldn’t need to describe his/her sexual orientation, if whether or hot he/she was disabled, or if he/she was going to the dance later that night.

There are many great and funny ways to mess up grammar. One of my favorites is using the wrong word because it sounds the same.

Example: It was they’re stuff.
It should read – It was their stuff.

they’re is short for they are so if written the first way it would read – It was they are stuff.

I like these the most because they can often be the funniest to read.