Spelling and Grammar

Before I begin this, I want you to make a mental note. This chapter is not for simpletons. The point in this book is to help you achieve marks and there are many ways you can lose silly marks for grammar and spelling. I would also like you to note that this is mainly for people who are doing assignments short hand (on a computer) rather than longhand. 

It is well known for professors to dock points and marks for spelling mistakes, and I do not disagree, but it does help if you are pre-warned about certain typos and spelling mistakes that often happen. Here are the top five that I have witnessed and been annoyed by:

1) Spaces - there should be a space behind each comma and two (one is fine but two is proper when typing-I am usually to lazy to do two) behind each full stop. It's easy to miss out, so go over your work (all professors state this and I support them) before submitting. 

2) Missing letters like 'tan' instead of 'than' or 'o' instead of two. 

3) "Clearer" or "More Clear"? Apparently the first is the appropriate style to use in the context.

4) Watch out for the spell checker - most computers and other electrical devices (Eg: Mainly apple devices) have spell checkers. For those who might not know exactly what they are and do, spell checkers automatically correct misspellings.  IT may be trying to help, but whether it misinterprets a magical word it does not recognise or thinks you have misspelt another, it will still try and correct you when you have got it right! 

5) Apostrophes and Capitals - The common problems. With capitals, just remember, if it's a name, a place or a person (or at the start of a sentence), then it can have a capital (I always seem to put capitals in the wrong places - when both writing and typing). There are many confusing rules to Apostrophes that I don't really understand them well, so I'll put them down in a list:

•  Use an apostrophe to show possession - Eg: "A woman's hat"

•  Regular nouns are nouns that form their plurals by adding either the letter s or es (guy, guys; letter, letters; actress, actresses; etc.). To show plural possession, simply put an apostrophe after the s.

•  And of course, the last, simple one, the one that shortens the word between. Eg: Doesn't, Can't, You've, etc.

*There are more, complex rules for apostrophes and their uses, but I just out the top three, seeing as I don't think I can take any more apostrophes and the other rules do not come into writing as much as the first three do.

6) Speech marks and lines - for a short story with people talking in it, you need to remember that every different person speaking needs another paragraph. (this was mentioned in a previous chapter, I know)

7) And finally, Numbers. In an essay, and in any pice of writing, a number should be written\typed as a word, not put down as the single signature. For example, the number Five should be written\typed as; "Five" rather than; "5". This is a pretty obvious one but sometimes we can get lazy and put the numbers down as their original signatures - I am simply reminding you!

With spelling, if you are on an electrical device able to search, then I advise you to (If you have misspelt a word that you do not know and have no spell checker to help you out) search how to spell it online, or simply pluck up the nearest dictionary! Some computers have spelling suggestions when you right-click with the mouse, this I find helps a lot.

So there we have it, the simple spelling and grammar section.