Common writing mistakes

A recent newspaper article has highlighted the writing mistakes of students from a British university. The students' tutor kept a diary of their writing mistakes, which include spelling, preposition and punctuation mistakes, as well as mistakes in word choice.

In fact, there were so many writing mistakes that the tutor recorded over 24 sides of A4 paper with examples such as occassions, deffective, sufferrers and nuetral. There were mistakes with particular words, such as occcurs, occurence, occuring and occured. Other students used "herd" instead of "heard", and "been" instead of "bean".

Fortunately, you can eliminate many potential mistakes when you write. First of all, the spell check on computers can pick up many errors and give you suggestions for correct spelling.

You should also read for sense. Some words sound the same, but are spelt in different ways, such as "been" and "bean". Your spell check won't find these sorts of errors, so you will need to read your writing with a critical eye.

You might also want to keep a list of words that you find difficult to spell. Check with your list when you use the words and get into the habit of spelling them correctly first time.

Finally, one of the easiest ways to write without common mistakes is to keep it simple. Avoid long sentences and complicated constructions and make sure that what you write is clear and as concise as possible.