Instructify

In this age of grammatical informality brought on by email, IM, texting, and yes, blogs, I cackled like a bitter old man when I read the headline to Brian Clark’s Copyblogger post, “Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb.”

Clark’s list isn’t comprehensive (he left out the “hear” vs. “here” mistake, for example), and this information can be found many places. But five is a manageable number to start with, and if you successfully eradicate just these from students’ research papers, you’ll probably sleep better at night.

After all, if you’re an English teacher, it’s your job to make sure kids know this stuff. If you ask me, which you didn’t, I’d say make every student read this article and mandate they can’t get an “A” if they break these rules. Yeah!

Sorry, I got a little worked up there.

Look, we all know there’s more to writing than knowing your Strunk and White. But grammar exists to improve communication. As a professor once said after writing the words “burro” and “burrow” on the chalk board: “One is an ass, the other is a hole in the ground. If you don’t know the difference, you won’t pass this class.” -BILL FERRIS

Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb