Most grammar mistakes come from a handful of repeat offenders. Learn these ten and you’ll catch the majority of errors before anyone else does.
The usual suspects
- its vs it’s — its is possessive; it’s = it is. “The dog wagged its tail.” “It’s raining.”
- your vs you’re — your is possessive; you’re = you are.
- there / their / they’re — place, possessive, “they are.”
- Comma splice — two full sentences joined by only a comma. Fix with a period, semicolon, or conjunction.
- Subject–verb agreement — “The list of items is long,” not are.
- affect vs effect — affect is usually a verb; effect usually a noun.
- then vs than — then = time; than = comparison.
- Dangling modifiers — “Walking in, the lights were off” (who was walking?). Name the subject.
- Apostrophes for plurals — 1990s, not 1990’s; photos, not photo’s.
- Misused semicolons — join related full sentences, not a sentence and a fragment.
Catch them automatically
You don’t have to memorize every rule. Run your draft through the grammar checker — it flags grammar, spelling, punctuation and style issues, groups them by type, and shows a correctness score, in 28 languages. Accept the fixes you agree with; you stay in control.
Then read it once more
Tools catch most mechanical errors, but a final human read catches the rest — especially meaning-level slips no checker can see. Fix the ten above, lean on a checker, and read it aloud once. That combination beats either alone.
AI-powered — please review results before use.